M87 Jet
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. Laval/C. Poitras et al.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Jubett, K. Arcand, and L. Frattare

Astronomers have produced the most detailed X-ray views ever obtained of the jet launched from the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier (M87), as reported in a press release from Laval University in Canada. The main video from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) showing X-ray images taken in 2012, 2017, 2023 and 2025. Using advanced image-processing techniques, researchers have tracked the evolution of the jet structures in remarkable detail.

Messier 87 is located about 55 million light-years from Earth and has one of the largest known black holes — weighing some 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun — in its core. This black hole was the first ever to have a direct image taken of it, by the Event Horizon Telescope and released in 2019. Prior to that, M87 was already very well known among astronomers for many reasons — including the spectacular jet that blasts away from the black hole.

 
M83
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/AURA/STScI, Hubble Heritage Team, W. Blair (STScI/Johns Hopkins University) and R. O'Connell (University of Virginia); Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Jubett, L. Frattare and P. Edmonds

This graphic shows two of the X-ray sources in a nearby galaxy that are changing their brightness in surprising ways as described in our latest press release. By analyzing data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory that span over 14 years, researchers found over 20 previously identified supernova remnants — remains from stars that exploded — that vary unexpectedly in X-ray brightness in Messier 83 (M83). These represent roughly half of the X-ray sources associated with supernova remnants in their sample in M83.

The panel on the left contains a composite image of M83 with X-rays from Chandra (red, green, and blue) and optical light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). The two varying Chandra sources are circled in the composite image and close-up timelapse images of these sources are shown in the panels on the right.

Sagittarius A*
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Northwestern Univ./M. Gorski; Radio:ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ALMA;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Astronomers have found that the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A*(Sgr A*), is blowing a hot cosmic wind — something scientists have been hunting for over 50 years.

Sagittarius C
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UCLA/Z. Zhu et al.; ESA/XMM-Newton; Optical: PanSTARRS; Radio: MeerKAT;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and P. Edmonds

Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers may have found a supernova remnant in an intriguing neighborhood in the middle of our galaxy. A paper describing these new findings published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Supernova remnants are the expanding remains of exploded stars and provide elements — like iron, oxygen, and silicon — that are critical for the formation of planets and for life as we know it to form and flourish.

This new supernova remnant, if confirmed, would be one of the closest ever discovered to the supermassive black hole at the central region of the Milky Way galaxy, an exotic region crammed with massive stars, long threads of magnetic fields and dense clouds of gas orbiting rapidly around the Galactic Center.

Abell 2029
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/C. Watson et al.; Optical: PanSTARRS;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk and P. Edmonds

The galaxy cluster Abell 2029 is sometimes described as “the most relaxed cluster in the Universe.” This moniker does not arise from some sort of mellow vibe, but rather because of how calm and undisturbed the superheated gas that pervades the cluster appears to be.

New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory clearly show that Abell 2029 had a much more colorful history than its current disposition suggests. The latest study finds that Abell 2029 is still settling down after a raucous collision with another smaller cluster about four billion years ago.

X-ray Dot 3DHST-AEGIS-12014
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Max Plank Inst./R. Hviding et al.; Optical/IR; NASA/ESA/STScI/HST;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

This image of a special object, dubbed the “X-ray dot,” represents a discovery from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory that could help explain the nature of a mysterious class of sources in the early Universe as described in our latest press release. Officially known as 3DHST-AEGIS-12014, the X-ray dot is located about 11.8 billion light-years from Earth and may provide a crucial bridge between young black holes embedded in dense gas and typical growing supermassive black holes.

Trumpler 3 and NGC 2353
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ/K. Getman; Optical/IR: PanSTARRS;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

These images of star clusters represent a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory that shows how young Sun-like stars are dimmer in X-rays than previously thought. As described in our latest press release, this result has implications for the prospects of life developing and surviving on planets in orbit around these stars.

Trumpler 3 and NGC 2353 are so-called open clusters that contains hundreds of young stars. These stars are tied to each other through gravity, having been formed from the same clouds of gas. Many of these stars have masses that are similar to our Sun, but are much younger. In these new composite images of Trumpler 3 and NGC 2353, X-rays from Chandra (purple) have been combined with an optical image from the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii (red, green, and blue). Another star clusters from the new Chandra study, NGC 2301 is shown in the same color schemes with the X-ray and optical data.

Zhibo Yu

We welcome Zhibo Yu as our guest blogger. He is the first author of a paper that is the subject of our latest Chandra press release and is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University, where he works with Prof. Niel Brandt on surveys of active galactic nuclei. His research primarily focuses on the coevolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. Zhibo joined Penn State in 2022. Before that, he earned his B.S. degree in physics from Fudan University, China, where he worked with Prof. Cosimo Bambi on black-hole X-ray binaries

In the late 1950s, astronomers began to discover powerful radio sources in the sky with very small angular sizes in visible light. These strange “star-like” objects were later known as “quasi-stellar objects” (QSOs), or quasars, which are very far away from our own Galaxy and are extremely luminous. Afterwards, in the early 1970s, Dutch-born American astronomer Maarten Schmidt was among the first to find that quasars appear to be more abundant when they are farther away from us.

Today, astronomers believe that these luminous quasars are powered by actively growing supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the centers of galaxies. Many growing SMBHs are not as bright as quasars and are generally referred to as active galactic nuclei (AGNs). When astronomers observe distant growing SMBHs, they are also looking back in time because light takes time to travel from these black holes to us. The farther away a black hole is, the earlier in cosmic history we are seeing it.

Spring Collection
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Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO

In the Northern Hemisphere this week, the calendar officially passes from winter into spring when the length of the day and the night become equal as the days become longer. Meanwhile, there are places in space where blooms of the stellar variety are always growing.

This collection of images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes contains regions where stars are forming. Often nicknamed “stellar nurseries,” they are cosmic gardens from which stars – not plants – emerge from the interstellar soil of gas and dust. X-rays are energetic enough that they can penetrate the gas and dust of these stellar nurseries, giving insight to the young stars and other high-energy phenomena that are happening within, including the effects of X-rays on any planets or planet-forming disks orbiting stars.

RCW 86
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Credit: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/SAO, XMM: ESA/XMM-NEWTON, IXPE:NASA/MSFC; Optical: NSF/NOIRLab;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt

NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) has taken a new observation of what may be the first documented evidence of a supernova, RCW 86.

RCW 86 is approximately 8,000 light-years from Earth in the Southern constellation of Circinus, occupying a region of the sky slightly larger than the full moon. In the year 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded witnessing a “guest star” in this area of the night sky that remained visible for 8 months.