The Chandra X-ray Observatory

A Space Telescope Almost 1/3 of the Way to the Moon Boosts Astronomy

Sep 1, 2009

Capturing the visible light spectrum through the Hubble telescope shows amazing images, but the Chandra X-ray telescope captures even more impressive images.

The Chandra X-ray telescope was launched on July 1999. It was named after the Indian physicist and astronomer Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who determined the mass limit for white dwarf stars to become neutron stars. Its science objective is to study higher energy X-rays, which make it possible to look at extremely faint stellar or galactic sources. Such objects would sometimes be strongly absorbed in crowded fields, so their visible light emissions would be hidden.

This telescope was one of four launched by NASA in the “Great Observatories” program that included Hubble, Compton, and Spitzer. Those other space telescopes studied visible light, Gamma-rays, and Infra-red rays respectively.

Chandra was launched into a high-earth elliptical orbit that allows long-duration uninterrupted exposures of celestial objects. In fact it orbits 200 times higher than Hubble. It is 45 feet long, making it one of the largest space telescopes in orbit.

Facts about Chandra

It has incredible resolving power. For instance it can resolve images comparable to seeing a stop sign from 12 miles away. It can observe X-rays from object as they fall into a black hole up to the last second before the disappear into the event horizon. Yet it only needs less than 2 kilowatts of electricity to operate the Chandra Spacecraft.

In 1999 it observed E0102 in the Small Magellanic Cloud, it observed a blast from a supernova. It’s image was multicolored due to the different x-ray energy frequencies. This type of electromagnetic radiation was not known to exist on the supernova.

Another discovery involves one galaxy passing through another at the rate of 2 million miles per hour. The galaxy group, Stephen’s Quintet, is shown moving away from an X-ray system dominated by spiral galaxies with faint emissions to one dominated by elliptical galaxies with bright x-ray emissions. Here the galaxy NGC 7318b is passing through the core of galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318a, and NGC 7319). This is causing turmoil that is displayed with powerful x-rays.

The discovery of an efficient “particle accelerators,” i.e., supernova remnants acting so. One supernova remnant has been known for several thousands of years. RCW 86 was first observed by Chinese astronomers in 185 AD. Now with Chandra astronomers have also discovered new behaviors about how the supernova shock waves act as particle accelerators. The team learned that the shock wave visible in this area accelerates particles and the energy used in this process matches the number of cosmic rays observed on Earth. They were able to find this by measuring the temperature of the shock wave. It turned out to be much lower than expected; but the astronomers were able to take this measurement and project it into the energy needed to move and accelerate cosmic rays. For additional discoveries see http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2003/03-158.html, a NASA release.

The Chandra telescope has added significantly to science because it has generated information from known space objects that were otherwise considered dead or at least uninteresting. That is to say the objects were not believed to be of any astronomical interest. But by looking at the object's X-ray emissions, that viewpoint was altered. Now astronomers have been able to go back and obtain additional information that explains not just the object's life but its surrounding space environment.

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/features/F_NASA_Great_Observatories_PS.html

Facts about Chandra

Discoveries

The copyright of the article The Chandra X-ray Observatory in Deep Space Astronomy is owned by George Garza. Permission to republish The Chandra X-ray Observatory in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.