An overview of the Chandra mission and goals, Chandra's namesake, top 10 facts.
Classroom activities, printable materials, interactive games & more.
Overview of X-ray Astronomy and X-ray sources: black holes to galaxy clusters.
All Chandra images released to the public listed by date & by category
Current Chandra press releases, status reports, interviews & biographies.
A collection of multimedia, illustrations & animations, a glossary, FAQ & more.
A collection of illustrations, animations and video.
Chandra discoveries in an audio/video format.
Why Astronomers Need Type 2 Quasars!
Episode 3 of Beyond The Veil:
The Search for Hidden Black Holes, a.k.a. Type 2 Quasars
April 3, 2000 ::
If it looks like ducks and walks like ducks... |
Many astronomers believe it is possible that type 2 quasars exist. Others maintain that they MUST exist in order to explain the mysterious X-ray background radiation.
In 1962, Riccardo Giacconi and his colleagues discovered that the X-ray sky was not dark. Rather it is bathed in a uniform, diffuse glow, called the X-ray background. A few years later, when quasars
were discovered, some scientists suspected that the X-ray background might be due to extremely distant quasars.
This was a plausible idea: the numbers of quasars and their power seemed to work out about right. But there was a problem. The spectrum of quasars does not match the spectrum of the background X
rays. The X-ray background has relatively more high-energy X rays than quasars.
You might say, the sources needed to explain the background looked like ducks and walked like ducks, but they did not quack like ducks. X-ray astronomers called this problem the "spectral
paradox."
One possible solution to the spectral paradox was that something other than quasars are the source of the X-ray background.
They might not sound like ducks, but they really are ducks... |
Another possible solution was that some quasars might be a special class of quasars, called Type 2 quasars, that show an excess of high-energy X-rays, not because the quasar produces such an excess,
but because a cloud around the quasar filters out the low energy X-rays. If many such sources were found with different-sized clouds and at different distances, the X-ray background would be
explained.
In other words, if the ducks have sacks over their heads, they might not sound like ducks, but they really are ducks!
 Episode 2
March 27, 2000 :: According to the unified model for AGNs, it all depends on your point of view. The central black hole is assumed to be surrounded by a thick donut-shaped cloud of gas and dust. Episode 2 |
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To be continued...
Next week, Chandra implicates Type 2 quasars in the mystery of the X-ray background.
