http://www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/kids_images.html en-us http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/ngc6240/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/ngc6240/kids.html Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:00:00 EST The two large spiral galaxies seen in this picture are similar in size and shape to our home galaxy, the Milky Way. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/ngc602/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/ngc602/kids.html Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:00:00 EST Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is more than just a giant barred spiral containing hundreds of billions of stars. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/kepler/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/kepler/kids.html Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:00:00 EST In 1604, a new star appeared in the night sky. It shone brighter than all the other stars, and for three weeks, it was even visible during the day! http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/47tuc/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/47tuc/kids.html Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:00:00 EST This new space picture shows a group of stars called a globular cluster. These are some of the oldest objects in space - almost as old as the Universe itself! http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/w49b/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/w49b/kids.html Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:00:00 EST Like the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, astronomers have to be good at solving puzzles by piecing together clues and evidence. When scientists using the Chandra X-ray Observatory noticed the strange, distorted shape of this supernova remnant, they knew something unusual had taken place. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/deml50/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/deml50/kids.html Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST There's a rule in nature: the more beautiful something is, the more deadly it is. For example, the most colorful animals, insects and flowers are almost always the most poisonous. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/vela/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/vela/kids.html Mon, 07 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST Millions of people around the world believe in ghosts, many of them even claim to have seen one. Well, now you can count yourself among them! This spooky new image shows a massive star in its afterlife. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/ngc922/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/ngc922/kids.html Thu, 06 Dec 2012 12:00:00 EST The Universe is vast and largely made up of empty space, but cosmic collisions still happen pretty often. Take the galaxy in this picture: it looks like a giant target board, and some 300 million years ago, a smaller galaxy scored a cosmic bullseye when it crashed right into the center of it. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/a30/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/a30/kids.html Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:00:00 EST Astronomers have captured a very special event in space: a so-called 'reborn planetary nebula'. This is a gas bubble inside a previously blown bubble, or nebula, like you can see in this image. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/cygob2/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/cygob2/kids.html Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:00:00 EST If you wanted to learn about young people, you would probably visit a school where there are lots of young people, right? This photograph shows a star "school" - home to over a thousand of the biggest and brightest young stars in the sky. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/pne/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/pne/kids.html Wed, 10 Oct 2012 12:00:00 EST Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have set out on a hunt, to look at as many planetary nebulae as they can! Planetary nebulae are simply glowing clouds of gas and dust, they actually have nothing to do with planets at all. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/n1929/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/n1929/kids.html Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EST Looking up at the night sky, you might think that space is dull, with lots of black, some white dots and just a hint of red if you're lucky. But if we look deeper, space has a lot more to offer than what our eyes can see! http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/phoenix/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/phoenix/kids.html Wed, 15 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EST Did you know that the sounds we hear on Earth are just vibrations of air? But that doesn't mean that space is an eerily silent place, just because there isn't any air out there. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/igrj11014/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/igrj11014/kids.html Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:00:00 EST Astronomers think the pulsar shown in this photo (shown in green in the box) is moving at an incredible speed of between 9 million and 11 million kilometres per hour! This could make it the fastest moving pulsar ever known! http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/sn2010/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/sn2010/kids.html Tue, 15 May 2012 12:00:00 EST In movies, heroes and villains are thrown forward after an explosion. This is because an powerful wave of energy, called a shock wave, is released. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/m83/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/m83/kids.html Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EST A black hole is formed when a massive star is squashed into an incredibly tiny volume. (The equivalent of squeezing the Earth into the size of a marble!) http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/musketball/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/musketball/kids.html Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EST Astronomers and archaeologists (like Indiana Jones) have a lot in common, as they both look for clues to understand past events. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/casa/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/casa/kids.html Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:00:00 EST These pictures show a star before and after it has had a radical makeover. The 'before' picture on the left is an artist's drawing of where the different ingredients inside a massive star used to be found. These ingredients are called chemical elements. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/a383/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/a383/kids.html Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:00:00 EST It's easy to assume that what we see and experience in our daily lives is 'the norm'. However, as astronomers learn more about our Universe, they're finding that sometimes the weird and wonderful stuff is actually more popular. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/sgra/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/sgra/kids.html Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST When the Solar System was formed, there were lots of spare pieces left over. These spare pieces are called asteroids and comets. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/g350/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/g350/kids.html Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST Every 50 years or so, a massive star in our Galaxy explodes in what is called a supernova. In the explosion, the star's outer shells of gas are blown into space. This hot gas gives off X-ray radiation, which astronomers can photograph using special telescopes in space. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/elgordo/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/elgordo/kids.html Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:00:00 EST This is no joke; that's exactly what has happened here. Two collections of galaxies, which are called 'galaxy clusters', collided. The resulting galaxy cluster that formed from the collision is called El Gordo, which means "fat one" in Spanish! http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/sxp1062/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/sxp1062/kids.html Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:00:00 EST Weird things happen to stars when they run out of fuel. That's because the fuel doesn't just generate light and heat - it is needed to stop stars from collapsing! This is a problem that the bright white star in the right-hand-side of this new space photo has already faced. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/a2052/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/a2052/kids.html Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:00:00 EST Like a soda drink moving around in a glass, huge clouds of hot gas are sloshing back and forth in this new space picture. The picture shows a collection of galaxies, which is known as a galaxy cluster. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/cygx1/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/cygx1/kids.html Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:00:00 EST The Earth's atmosphere blocks harmful high-energy radiation from space, such as X-rays, from reaching the ground. To detect this radiation, astronomers have to go beyond the Earth's atmosphere. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/30dor/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/30dor/kids.html Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:00:00 EST Don't worry if you have a phobia of spiders, it is safe to keep reading! That's because this wonderful new picture of a star-forming region called the Tarantula Nebula doesn't show the bright lines of gas that usually make it look like it has the legs of a spider. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/g299/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/g299/kids.html Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:00:00 EST This eerie new astronomy picture looks like the Eye of Sauron in the film The Lord of the Rings. In the film, the Eye of Sauron marks the final destination of the character Frodo's long journey. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/ngc281/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/ngc281/kids.html Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:00:00 EST To see the Universe in full, astronomers have to get creative. They combine multiple photos taken by different cameras to make one colorful picture. For example, in this beautiful new picture of a star-forming cloud, the space telescope called Chandra only captured the purple regions. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/corot/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/corot/kids.html Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:00:00 EST Some places on Earth are extreme: the North and South Poles with their freezing temperatures, the deep sea where sunlight cannot reach, and the inside of fiery hot volcanoes. But none of these regions come close to comparing to the harsh conditions found on some other planets in the Universe. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/n3393/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/n3393/kids.html Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EST It's great that the Earth's atmosphere blocks harmful radiation from space, such as X-rays, from reaching the ground - we couldn't survive without it! But astronomers would like to study this radiation because it gives them useful information about objects in the Universe, such as stars and galaxies. So what can they do? http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/a2744/kids.html http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/a2744/kids.html Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:00:00 EST It's hard to picture just how big the Universe is. For instance, the Earth seems like a big place to us, but you could fit about one million Earths inside our nearest star, the Sun. And the Sun is just one of billions of stars that make up our galaxy, which is called the Milky Way.