This week was the 10th anniversary of the first deep space pictures taken by NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the space agency celebrated by … well, taking another picture.
Actually, what NASA did was take two pictures — one with Chandra, and one with the Hubble Space Telescope — and merge them together to create this stunning image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula.
Chandra’s claim to fame is that its mirrors are 100 times more sensitive to X-ray emissions than previous telescopes. That’s opened up the galaxy in a whole new way to scientists pursuing X-ray astronomy, which isn’t effective from Earth’s surface because the planet’s atmosphere absorbs most X-rays.
For example, according to NASA, in this image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, “[t]he intensity of the X-ray emission is correlated to the brightness of the orange coloring. The intensity of X-rays from the central star was unexpected, and this is the first time astronomers have seen such emissions from the central star of a planetary nebula.”
Chandra has already beaten original estimates of its useful life, which were initially 5 years, then 10, and now stand at 15. The next major X-ray observatory, a joint effort of NASA and the European and Japanese space agencies, won’t be launched until 2020.