Portal:Radiation astronomy/Pictures

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Selected pictures
Infrared images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) are combined in this image of RCW 86, the dusty remains of the oldest documented example of an exploding star, or supernova. The infrared images, when combined with optical and X-ray data, clearly indicate that the source of the mysterious object seen in the sky over 1,800 years ago must have been a Type Ia supernova. On Wikiversity is a fair use image of RCW86 that combines an X-ray image from Chandra and XMM-Newton of RCW 86. Low energy X-rays are in red, medium energies in green, and high energies in blue. RCW 86 was created by a star that exploded about 2,000 years ago. RA 14h 45m 02.30s Dec Template:Dec, observation date: June 15, 2004. Credit: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Utrecht/J.Vink et al. XMM-Newton: ESA/Univ. of Utrecht/J.Vink et al.



NRL scientists J. D. Purcell, C. Y. Johnson, and Dr. F. S. Johnson among those recovering instruments from a V-2 used for upper atmospheric research above the New Mexico desert. This is V-2 number 54, launched January 18, 1951 (photo by Dr. Richard Tousey, NRL).



Comet Lulin was passing through the constellation Libra when Swift imaged it on January 28, 2009. This image merges data acquired by Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (blue and green) and X-Ray Telescope (red). At the time of the observation, the comet was 99.5 million miles from Earth and 115.3 million miles from the Sun.



The Crab Nebula is a remnant of an exploded star. This is the Crab Nebula in various energy bands, including a hard X-ray image from the HEFT data taken during its 2005 observation run. Each image is 6′ wide.



This multiwavelength composite shows the supernova remnant IC 443, also known as the Jellyfish Nebula. Fermi GeV gamma-ray emission is shown in magenta, optical wavelengths as yellow, and infrared data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission is shown as blue (3.4 microns), cyan (4.6 microns), green (12 microns) and red (22 microns). Cyan loops indicate where the remnant is interacting with a dense cloud of interstellar gas.



Chandra X-ray Observatory image of Cygnus X-1. Credit: Chandra: NASA/CXC.



Cassiopeia A: a false color image composited of data from three sources. Red is infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, orange is visible data from the Hubble Space Telescope, and blue and green are data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory.



Chandra's image of the supernova remnant shows an expanding bubble of multimillion degree debris (green and red) inside a more rapidly moving shell of extremely high energy electrons (filamentary blue). As a huge ball of exploding plasma, it was Irving Langmuir who coined the name plasma because of its similarity to blood plasma, and Hannes Alfvén who noted its cellular nature. The filamentary blue outer shell of X-ray emitting high-speed electrons is also a characteristic of plasmas. This is a false-colour x-ray image in which the energy levels (in keV) of the x-rays have been assigned a colours as follows: Red 0.95-1.26 keV, Green 1.63-2.26 keV, Blue 4.1-6.1 keV. All x-rays images must use processed colours since x-rays (as are radio waves, infra-red) are invisible to the human eye. But they are not invisible to suitable equipment, such as x-ray telescopes. The red and green bands highlight the expanding cloud of plasma with temperatures in the millions of degrees.



Classified as a Peculiar star, Eta Carinae exhibits a superstar at its center as seen in this image from Chandra. The new X-ray observation shows three distinct structures: an outer, horseshoe-shaped ring about 2 light years in diameter, a hot inner core about 3 light-months in diameter, and a hot central source less than 1 light-month in diameter which may contain the superstar that drives the whole show. The outer ring provides evidence of another large explosion that occurred over 1,000 years ago. Credit: Chandra Science Center and NASA.



On the right is the visual image of the constellation Orion. On the left is Orion as seen in X-rays only. Betelgeuse is easily seen above the three stars of Orion's belt on the right. The X-ray colors represent the temperature of the X-ray emission from each star: hot stars are blue-white and cooler stars are yellow-red. The brightest object in the optical image is the full moon, which is also in the X-ray image. Credit: Konrad Denner/Wolfgang Voges. The X-ray image was actually obtained by the ROSAT satellite during the All-Sky Survey phase in 1990-1991.



Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the hot X-ray emitting gas that pervades the galaxy cluster MS 0735.6+7421 in the constellation Camelopardalis. Two vast cavities - each 600,000 lyrs in diameter appear on opposite sides of a large galaxy at the center of the cluster. These cavities are filled with a two-sided, elongated, magnetized bubble of extremely high-energy electrons that emit radio waves. Image is 4.2 arcmin per side. RA 07h 41m 50.20s Dec +74° 14' 51.00". Observation date: November 30, 2003. Credit: NASA/CXC/Ohio U./B.McNamara.



On the left is a Chandra X-ray image that reveals a large cloud of hot gas that extends throughout the Hydra A galaxy cluster. Image is 2.7 arcmin across. RA 09h 18m 06s Dec -12° 05' 45" in Hydra. Observation date: October 30, 1999. Instrument: ACIS. Credit:NASA/CXC/SAO. On the right is an image that has the radio image of Greg Taylor, NRAO, overlain on the X-ray image from Chandra. The radio source Hydra A originates in a galaxy near the center of the cluster. Optical observations show a few hundred galaxies in the cluster. Credit:NASA/CXC/SAO; Radio: NRAO.



Chandra image of two galaxies (Arp 270) in the early stage of a merger in the constellation Leo Minor. In the image, red represents low, green intermediate, and blue high-energy (temperature) X-rays. Image is 4 arcmin on a side. RA 10h 49m 52.5s Dec Template:Dec. Observation date: April 28, 2001. Instrument: ACIS. Credit: NASA/U. Birmingham/A.Read.



This Chandra X-ray image of Radio Galaxy Pictor A shows a spectacular jet emanating from the center of the galaxy (left) that extends across 360 thousand lyr toward a brilliant hot spot.The bright spot at the right in the image is the head of the jet. Image is 4.2 arcmin across. RA 05h 19m 49.70s Dec -45° 46' 45" in Pictor. Instrument: ACIS. Credit: NASA/UMD/A.Wilson et al.



Chandra mosaic of the X-ray sources in the Lockman Hole. Color code: Energy (red 0.4-2 keV, green 2-8 keV, blue 4-8 keV). Image is about 50 arcmin per side. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U. Wisconsin/A.Barger et al.; Illustrations: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss.



A launch of the Black Brant 8 Microcalorimeter at the turn of the century as a part of the joint undertaking by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center known as the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter (XQC) project.



This ROSAT PSPC false-color image is of a portion of a nearby stellar wind superbubble (the Orion-Eridanus Bubble) stretching across Eridanus and Orion.



X-ray photo by Chandra X-ray Observatory of the Bullet Cluster. Exposure time was 140 hours. The scale is shown in megaparsecs. Redshift (z) = 0.3, meaning its light has wavelengths stretched by a factor of 1.3.



The GOES 14 spacecraft carries a Solar X-ray Imager to monitor the Sun’s X-rays for the early detection of solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and other phenomena that impact the geospace environment.



The Swift XRT contains a grazing incidence Wolter I telescope to focus X-rays onto a state-of-the-art CCD. The complete mirror module for the XRT consists of the X-ray mirrors, thermal baffle, a mirror collar, and an electron deflector. To prevent on-orbit degradation of the mirror module's performance, it is maintained at 20 ± 5 °C, with gradients of <1 °C by an actively controlled thermal baffle (purple, in schematic below) similar to the one used for JET-X. A composite telescope tube holds the focal plane camera (red), containing a single CCD-22 detector.



Chandra X-ray Observatory and Inertial Upper Stage sit inside the payload bay on Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-93.



This composite image contains the first picture of the Earth in X-rays, taken in March 1996, with the orbiting Polar satellite. The area of brightest X-ray emission is red. Such X-rays are not dangerous because they are absorbed by lower parts of the Earth's atmosphere. Credit: Polar, PIXIE, NASA. (The caption and image are from the Astronomy Picture of the Day for December 30, 1996.)



Image of the M74 galaxy in Infrared at 3.6 (blue), 8.0 (green) and 24 (red) µm. The image has been made by myself (Médéric Boquien) from the data retrieved on the SINGS project public archives of the Spitzer Space Telescope (courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech). Compare this with v:File:Messier 74 ULX.jpg a composite image (X-ray - red, optical - blue & white) of the spiral galaxy M74 with an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) indicated inside the box. Image is 9 arcmin per side at RA 01h 36m 41.70s Dec +15º 46' 59.0" in Pisces. Observation dates: June 19, 2001; October 19, 2001. Aka: NGC 628, ULX: CXOU J013651.1+154547. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U. of Michigan/J. Liu et al.; Optical: NOAO/AURA/NSF/T.Boroson.



Jupiter shows intense X-ray emission associated with auroras in its polar regions (Chandra observatory X-ray image on the left). The accompanying schematic illustrates how Jupiter's unusually frequent and spectacular auroral activity is produced. Observation period: 17 h, 24-26 February 2003.



Using the orbiting Chandra X-ray telescope, astronomers have imaged the center of our near-twin island universe, finding evidence for a bizarre object. Like the Milky Way, Andromeda's galactic center appears to harbor an X-ray source characteristic of a black hole of a million or more solar masses. Seen above, the false-color X-ray picture shows a number of X-ray sources, likely X-ray binary stars, within Andromeda's central region as yellowish dots. The blue source located right at the galaxy's center is coincident with the position of the suspected massive black hole. While the X-rays are produced as material falls into the black hole and heats up, estimates from the X-ray data show Andromeda's central source to be very cold - only about million degrees, compared to the tens of millions of degrees indicated for Andromeda's X-ray binaries.



This is an X-ray image of two hot gas shells produced by supernova explosions. Although the shells appear to be colliding, it may be an illusion. Chandra X-ray spectra show that the shell of hot gas on the upper left contains considerably more iron than the one on the lower right. This implies that stars with very different ages exploded to produce these objects. The remnant on the upper left is from an old white dwarf star in a binary system, and the one on the lower right is from a much younger massive star, so the apparent proximity of the remnants is probably the result of a chance alignment.



Chandra observations of the central regions of the Perseus galaxy cluster. Image is 284 arcsec across. RA 03h 19m 47.60s Dec +41° 30' 37.00" in Perseus. Observation dates: 13 pointings between August 8, 2002 and October 20, 2004. Color code: Energy (Red 0.3-1.2 keV, Green 1.2-2 keV, Blue 2-7 keV). Instrument: ACIS. Credit: NASA/CXC/IoA/A.Fabian et al.



This is a ROSAT false-color image in X-rays between 500 eV and 1.1 keV of the Chamaeleon I dark cloud. The contours are 100 µm emission from dust measured by the IRAS satellite. Credit: D Burrows, J Mendenhall, and E Feigelson Penn State University using the US/German ROSAT satellite.



This montage of Chandra images shows a pair of interacting galaxies known as The Antennae. The top image, a wide field X-ray view, reveals spectacular loops of hot gas spreading out from the southern part of The Antenna into intergalactic space. In the closeup view on the lower left, the point sources have been taken out to emphasize the hot gas clouds in the central regions of The Antennae. The image at the lower right is processed and color-coded to show regions rich in iron (red), magnesium (green) and silicon (blue). Image is 4.8 arcmin across. Instrument: ACIS. Color code: Energy (Red: 0.3-0.65 keV, Green: 0.65-1.5 keV, Blue: 1.5-6.0 keV). Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/G.Fabbiano et al.



The X-ray emitter Cygnus X-1, in the constellation of Cygnus, is imaged by a balloon born telescope. A balloon was launched for the High Energy Replicated Optics project on May 23, 2001, from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, USA, reaching an altitude of 39 km. Using a telescope containing unique X-ray mirrors, a team from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has obtained the world's first focused high-energy X-ray images of any astronomical object, e.g., Cygnus X-1.



This is an image of the instrument called the Proportional Counter Array on the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite.




Nominating or creating selected pictures

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