New satellite images show creatures you've never seen before and... the guts of a dead star!
Human vision may be limited to a certain range of wavelengths, but that doesn't mean we'll ever understand the full complexity of light in our universe.
Instruments can peer into the universe in systems invisible to our eyes, showing us not only the dynamics of the stars, but their absolutely amazing beauty. That's what we see in a new set of images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which combines its data with other instruments to create stunning multi-wavelength views.
Because different wavelengths of light have different energies, these images can show us the dynamics of cosmic bodies from low energy to high energy. This could help scientists unravel the mechanisms behind the amazing light shows.
According to "Russia Today", R Aquarii appears in X-rays from Chandra and near-infrared and optical rays from the Hubble Space Telescope, and emerges as a pair of stars trapped in a violent dance of death 650 light years from Earth.
One star is a red giant, known as a variable star Mira, at the end of its lifespan.
Stars of this type have already lost at least half their material, and when they pulsate, they are 1,000 times as bright as the Sun.
The other star is a white dwarf - a "dead" star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel - and it also has a lot going on.
While the red giant is ejecting the material, the white dwarf is ejecting it.
The material devoured by the red giant accumulates on its surface, which sometimes leads to a massive thermonuclear explosion that ejects the material into space.
This violent interaction produces clouds of dust and gas in the nebula around the duo, caused by gravitational interactions and explosive shock waves.
Cassiopeia A, located 11,000 light-years away, is one of the most famous and studied objects in the Milky Way.
It's what we call a supernova remnant - what's left after a massive star smashed into kaboom.
Here, X-ray data from Chandra is combined with radio data from Karl Jansky Very Large Array and optical data from Hubble.
These different wavelengths can reveal what's really going on in the expanding cloud, which is made up of the guts of a dead star.
With this collected data, scientists can identify the different elements inside the explosion.
Chandra data alone revealed that the exploding star released 10,000 Earth masses of sulfur and 20,000 Earth masses of silicon;
70,000 Earth masses of iron;
and 1 million Earth masses of oxygen.
This is important information, because it tells us what elements were produced in the star when it died.
In turn, scientists can use this data to learn more about the star when it was still burning, to make predictions about similar stars in our galaxy.
One image combines X-ray data from Chandra and optical data from Hubble to show the results of another nearby galactic encounter.
Our universe emits energy in many forms and by using telescopes like @chandraxray, @NASAHubble, @NASAWebb, and #IXPE we will have the tools to explore it.
Take a look at the ways different types of light from ground and space telescopes can be combined: https://t.co/AuPDJBZqhx pic.twitter.com/QtAIpMtb6a
— Thomas Zurbuchen (@Dr_ThomasZ) February 3, 2022
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