13 photos from NASA's most powerful X-ray space telescope reveal the invisible universe

[Judi Lynn]

Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Jul 24, 2024, 4:04 PM CDT

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The Crab Nebula, the result of a bright supernova explosion witnessed by astronomers in 1054 A.D. Chandra sees the rings around its center with jets blasting into space (bright purple). X-ray: (Chandra) NASA/CXC/SAO, (IXPE) NASA/MSFC; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand, L. Frattare, and J. Schmidt

• NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is one of its most scientifically productive space missions.
  
  
• The telescope has been in space for 25 years, discovering black holes and dark matter.
  
  
• Chandra's best images show how it reveals details that other telescopes can't see.

NASA has been using X-rays to crack the invisible secrets of the universe for decades.

The Einstein Observatory pioneered X-ray astronomy in the late '70s, but the crown jewel of this science field is the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has been in space for the last 25 years.

Here are some of Chandra's most stunning images and groundbreaking discoveries of the invisible X-ray universe.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has been capturing the invisible universe for 25 years.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-nasa-chandra-xray-space-telescope-reveal-invisible-universe-2024

[JoseBalow]

1. Wow, these images are incredible!

Combined data from Chandra and Webb revealed new details of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.

[HeartsCanHope]

2. Truly extraordinary photos!

Thank you so much.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

3. NASA is planning to shut Chandra down due to budget concerns.

Chandra is the only xray telescope, and with tweaks by scientists and engineers it is putting out excellent scientific data.

That is why it's so serious that NASA is threatening to shut down the observatory.

Without question, the unexpected end of Chandra would be heartbreaking for astronomers, and for astronomy. Scientists who use the Earth-orbiting spacecraft as their north star to elucidate the structures of black holes will face layoffs, and there is currently no other observatory capable of achieving the kind of X-ray resolutions Chandra has been obtaining since it reached its cozy spot around our planet in 1999. It is these resolutions, in fact, that have allowed those black hole scientists to study not just the voids themselves, but also many cosmic wanderers with the misfortune of treading too close.

Its nested mirrors smoothed down to the precision of a few atoms make Chandra sensitive enough to follow spaceborne signals back to their very faint sources, a sensitivity even the all-powerful James Webb Space Telescope doesn't have. That's because the JWST actually doesn't work with X-rays at all. Neither does the Hubble Space Telescope, nor the Euclid Space Telescope. In fact, there are actually not many observatories that look at X-rays in general.

The space observatory can identify neutron stars in faraway galaxies that likely remain hidden to our other devices, and it can decode intricacies of stellar explosions so well it's easy to forget how incomprehensible a stellar explosion is to the human mind. Without Chandra, it'd be tough to achieve all of these things, maybe impossible, until someone makes a Chandra 2.0.

Yet, there isn't a plan to make a Chandra 2.0.