1. Tour of El Gordo
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Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes have discovered an extraordinary galaxy cluster some 7 billion light years from Earth. This cluster has been nicknamed "El Gordo," which means the "big" or "fat" one in Spanish. The nickname is a nod to the telescope in Chile that was used to help discover it, but also to the fact that El Gordo is the most massive, the hottest, and gives off more X-rays than any other galaxy cluster at this distance or beyond. The X-rays from Chandra and optical data from the VLT show that El Gordo is, in fact, the collision of two galaxy clusters ramming into one another at millions of miles per hour. This makes a younger cousin to the well-known Bullet Cluster. Galaxy clusters are very important for many reasons. As the largest objects in the Universe that are held together by gravity, galaxy clusters can be used to study the mysterious phenomena of dark matter and dark energy.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

Related Chandra Images:

• Photo Album: El Gordo

2. Tour of G350.1-0.3
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G350.1+0.3 is a young and exceptionally bright supernova remnant located nearly 15,000 light years from Earth toward the center of the Milky Way. While many supernova remnants are nearly circular, G350.1+0.3 has a strikingly unusual appearance. X-rays from Chandra and infrared data from Spitzer outline this bizarre shape, which astronomers think comes from the stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold gas. With an age of between 600 and 1,200 years old, G350.1+0.3 is in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because too much gas and dust lies along our line of sight to the remnant, blocking the view.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

Related Chandra Images:

• Photo Album: G350.1-0.3

3. Tour of GB 1428+4217
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The most distant jet in X-ray light has been discovered using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This jet was found in the quasar known as GB 1428+4217, or GB 1428 for short. How does GB 1428 make its jet? When giant black holes pull in material at a very rapid rate, large amounts of energy are released. This results in the production of intense radiation and beams of high-energy particles that blast away from the black hole at nearly the speed of light. Astronomers call these beams of particles "jets". At a distance of 12.4 billion years from Earth, the jet in GB 1428 gives astronomers a glimpse into the explosive activity associated with the growth of giant black holes in the early Universe.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

4. Tour of IGR J11014-6103
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Has the speediest pulsar been found? That's the question that astronomers are asking after three different telescopes looked at the pulsar known as IGR J11014-6103. This pulsar was found racing away from a supernova remnant located about 30,000 light years from Earth. An image from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite shows a glowing debris field in X-rays. This is the remains of a massive star that exploded thousands of years before. Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers were able to focus their attention on a small, comet-shaped X-ray source outside the boundary of this supernova remnant. It appears that this object, thought to be a rapidly spinning, incredibly dense star - which astronomers call a "pulsar" -- was ejected during the supernova explosion. Researchers calculate that this pulsar may be dashing away from the supernova at speeds of about 6 million miles per hour. If this result is confirmed, it would make this pulsar the fastest ever seen.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

5. Tour of Kepler's Supernova Remnant
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This image of Kepler's supernova remnant shows the expanding ball of debris from a supernova explosion in our galaxy. The supernova itself was seen in 1604 by Johannes Kepler and others. The different colors in the Chandra X-ray data show different energies in the supernova remnant, and optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey shows stars in the field. The Kepler supernova was the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf. New analysis suggests that the supernova explosion was not only more powerful, but might have also occurred at a greater distance, than previously thought.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

Related Chandra Images:

• Photo Album: Kepler's Supernova Remnant

6. Tour of M83
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Since the 1980s, astronomers have known about a mysterious class of objects that they call "ultraluminous X-ray sources," or ULXs. They named them this because these objects give off more X-ray light than most other binary systems where black holes or neutron stars are in orbit around a normal companion star. Recently, scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes spotted a ULX in the spiral galaxy M83 that was acting even more strangely. This ULX increased its output in X-rays by 3,000 times over the course of several years. Using clues found in the X-ray and optical data, researchers think this ULX may be a member of a population of black holes that up until now was suspected to exist but had not been confirmed. These black holes, which are the smaller stellar-mass black holes, are older and more volatile than previously thought.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

Related Chandra Images:

• Photo Album: M83

7. Tour of NGC 1929
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The star cluster known as NGC 1929 is embedded in a cloud of gas and dust, which astronomers call the N44 nebula. Many new stars, some of them very massive, are forming within this star cluster. These massive stars produce intense radiation, expel matter at high speeds, and race through their evolution to explode as supernovas. The winds and supernova shock waves carve out huge cavities called superbubbles in the surrounding gas. X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory show hot regions created by these winds and shocks. Meanwhile, infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope outline where the dust and cooler gas are found. An optical light image from a European Space Observatory telescope in Chile shows where ultraviolet radiation from hot, young stars is causing gas in the nebula to glow.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

Related Chandra Images:

• Photo Album: NGC 1929

8. Tour of NGC 3627
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The spiral galaxy NGC 3627 is located about 30 million light years from Earth. Astronomers recently completed a survey of galaxies to look for supermassive black holes. Of the 62 galaxies, 37 - including NGC 3627 - were found to have X-ray sources at their centers and are candidates for being powered by supermassive black holes. Seven of these 37 were previously unknown. This result confirms other Chandra studies that show X-ray surveys are particularly good at finding supermassive black holes that are relatively inactive.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

Related Chandra Images:

• Photo Album: NGC 3627

9. Tour of NGC 4178
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A supermassive black hole with one of the lowest masses ever observed has been spotted in the middle of a galaxy, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other observatories. The black hole is located in the middle of the spiral galaxy NGC 4178, shown in this optical image. The inset shows an X-ray source at the position of the black hole, located at the center of a Chandra image. An analysis of the Chandra data, along with infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope and radio data from the Very Large Array suggests that the black hole has a mass less than about 200,000 times that of the sun. This is lower than the mass of most supermassive black holes. The host galaxy is of a type not expected to harbor supermassive black holes, suggesting that this black hole, while related to its supermassive cousins, may have a different origin.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

Related Chandra Images:

• Photo Album: NGC 4178

10. Tour of NGC 4342 & NGC 4291
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Astronomers think that just about every galaxy has a giant black hole at its center. For quite some time, the prevailing wisdom has been that the mass of these supermassive black holes is tied to the size of the tightly packed group of stars around the galaxy's center known as its bulge. Two objects, however, have been discovered that are challenging this idea. NGC 4342 and NGC 4291 are relatively nearby galaxies, which means astronomers can get particularly good views of them. New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed the presence of massive envelopes of dark matter around each galaxy. The researchers think the growth of the supermassive black holes may, in fact, be tied more closely to the amount and distribution of the dark matter in each galaxy, rather than the mass of stars contained in their bulges as previously believed.
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(NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

Related Chandra Images:

• Photo Album: NGC 4342