An overview of the Chandra mission and goals, Chandra's namesake, top 10 facts.
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Overview of X-ray Astronomy and X-ray sources: black holes to galaxy clusters.
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A collection of illustrations, animations and video.
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More Images of The Arches Cluster
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Chandra X-ray Images of the Arches Cluster
The Chandra observation of the Arches shows an envelope of 60 million degree gas around the star cluster. This compact cluster is composed of hot, massive stars that live short, furious lives lasting only a few million years. During this period, gas evaporates from these stars in the form of intense stellar winds. The envelope of hot gas observed by Chandra is thought to be due to collisions of the winds from numerous stars.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/Northwestern/F.Zadeh et al.)

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Hubble Infrared Image of the Arches Cluster
(Credit: NASA/HST/NICMOS)
This Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared image shows a similar region of the Arches Cluster as the X-ray data. Some of the individual stars in the cluster can be seen as point-like sources. The data was taken with Hubble's NICMOS on September 14, 1997.
Scale: Image is 0.6 arcmin on each side.
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AAO Optical Images of the Arches Cluster
This optical image of the Arches Cluster is shown to the same scale as the Chandra data. (Credit: AAO)

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VLA Radio Images of the Arches Cluster
Chandra's X-ray observations are shown in context of the spectacular filamentary structures that appear in radio wavelengths. This radio image was taken by the Very Large Array (VLA) on March 31, 1984. (Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF/C.Lang)

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The Arches Cluster Radio Image with X-ray inset
(Credit: Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF/C.Lang, X-ray: NASA/CXC/Northwestern/F.Zadeh et al.)

Scale: Image is 0.6 arcmin on each side.


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