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Dark energy, black holes and exploding stars: NASA's Chandra Observatorymarks five years of scientific achievement (Forwarded)



 
 
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Old August 13th 04, 02:16 PM
Andrew Yee
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Default Dark energy, black holes and exploding stars: NASA's Chandra Observatorymarks five years of scientific achievement (Forwarded)

Steve Roy
Media Relations Dept.
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
(256) 544-0034

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Obs. Center, Cambridge, MA
(617) 496-7998

For release: 08/12/04

Release No.: 04-212

Dark energy, black holes and exploding stars: NASA's Chandra Observatory marks
five years of scientific achievement

On August 12, 1999, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory opened its sunshade doors
for the first time, allowing celestial X-ray light to reach the observatory's
mirrors. This one small step for the observatory proved to be a giant leap for
science as Chandra began its mission to shed new light on a violent, mysterious
universe invisible to the human eye.

"Humans cannot see X-rays, but Chandra can," said Chandra project scientist Dr.
Martin C. Weisskopf of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
"And what the observatory has revealed in five short years has been nothing
short of amazing. Thanks to Chandra, we've gleaned new information on dark
energy, black holes, exploding stars and all other categories of astronomical
objects."

"Chandra's resolving power is equivalent to the ability to read a newspaper
headline a half-mile away," said Chandra Program Manager Keith Hefner of the
Marshall Center. "It's an engineering marvel that has performed nearly
flawlessly and provided major science discoveries over the past five years."

A Chandra timeline reveals some of its most noteworthy discoveries:

* Chandra finds a ring around the Crab Nebula. After only two months in space,
the observatory reveals a brilliant ring around the heart of the Crab Pulsar in
the Crab Nebula -- the remains of a stellar explosion -- providing clues about
how the nebula is energized by a pulsing neutron, or collapsed, star. (Sept. 28,
1999)

* Chandra reveals a possible black hole in the Milky Way. Culminating 25 years
of searching by astronomers, researchers say that a faint X-ray source, newly
detected by Chandra, may be the long-sought X-ray emission from a known
supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. (January 14, 2000)

* Chandra finds the most distant X-ray cluster. Using the Chandra Observatory,
astronomers find the most distant X-ray cluster of galaxies yet. Approximately
10 billion light-years from Earth, the cluster 3C294 is 40 percent farther than
the next most distant X-ray galaxy cluster. (Feb. 20, 2001)

* Chandra discovers X-rays from Jupiter. Using Chandra, astronomers discover a
pulsating hot spot of X-rays in the polar regions of the planet's upper
atmosphere and uncover evidence the X-ray source is not arising from the region
of Jupiter where previously believed. (Aug. 29, 2002)

* Chandra makes first I.D. of a binary black hole. By revealing two active black
holes in the nucleus of the extraordinarily bright galaxy NGC 6240, a Chandra
image proves for the first time that two supermassive black holes can co-exist
in the same galaxy. (Nov. 11, 2002)

* Chandra makes deepest X-ray exposure. A Chandra image, Deep Field North,
captures for 23 days an area of the sky one-fifth the size of the full moon.
Even though the faintest sources detected produced only one X-ray photon every
four days, Chandra finds more than 600 X-ray sources, most of them supermassive
black holes in galaxy centers. (June 19, 2003)

* Chandra sheds new light on the Vela Pulsar. Chandra offers new insight into
pulsars, small and extremely dense stars. Created from a series of Chandra
observations, an X-ray movie of the Vela pulsar reveals a spectacularly erratic
jet that varies in a way never before seen, whipping about like an untended fire
hose at about half the speed of light. (June 30, 2003)

* Chandra 'hears' a black hole. Using the Chandra Observatory, astronomers for
the first time detect sound waves from a supermassive black hole. Coming from a
black hole 250 million light years from Earth, the "note" is the deepest ever
detected from an object in the Universe. (Sept. 9, 2003)

* Chandra finds evidence of new class of black holes. Chandra finds that
mysterious, powerful X-ray sources found in nearby galaxies may represent a new
class of objects. These sources, cooler than typical neutron-star or black-hole
X-ray sources, may be a large new population of black holes with masses several
hundred times that of the sun. (March 1, 2004)

* Chandra opens new line of investigation on dark energy. Using galaxy-cluster
images from Chandra, astronomers apply a powerful, new method for detecting and
probing dark energy. The results offer intriguing clues about the nature of dark
energy and the fate of the Universe. (May 18, 2004)

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program for the Office
of Space Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington. Northrop Grumman of Redondo
Beach, Calif., formerly TRW, Inc., was the prime development contractor for the
observatory. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and
flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Images associated with this release are available at:

http://chandra.harvard.edu
and
http://chandra.nasa.gov

IMAGE CAPTION:
[http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news/news/p...os04-212.html]
This image was produced by combining a dozen NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory
observations made of a 130 light-year region in the center of the Milky Way. The
colors represent low (red), medium (green) and high (blue) energy X-rays. Thanks
to Chandra's unique resolving power, astronomers have now been able to identify
thousands of point-like X-ray sources due to neutron stars, black holes, white
dwarfs, foreground stars, and background galaxies. What remains is a diffuse
X-ray glow extending from the upper left to the lower right, along the direction
of the disk of the galaxy. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Ala., manages the Chandra program. (NASA/CXC/UCLA/M. Muno et al.)
 




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