Introducing Chandra's Video Blog

While we like the written word as much as the next person, we thought it would be good to mix things up. We recently got a new, small, handheld video camera (about the size of a cell phone). The plan is to use this to add simple videos to the Chandra blog and other places on the website. Because it's handheld and very sensitive, it's easy for the videos to appear shaky and the sound is not perfect. We'll work on this for the future.

Ushering in IYA2009, Chandra-Style

There are some exciting, yet different, Chandra-related events happening at the American Astronomical Society (http://aas.org/) meeting in Long Beach, CA today. First, there was a press conference this morning to announce new results on Cassiopeia A that bring this supernova remnant "to life". One result shows how Cas A has changed from 2000 – just after Chandra’s launch – through until late 2007. This is the first time scientists have been able to watch as a supernova remnant changes like this over time.

Last minute E-carding

It sounds like a good portion of the United States got walloped over the weekend with snow and ice and seemingly everything in between. (Yesterday was, after all, the winter solstice and the official start of the season, so what else should we have expected?) While the white stuff can be beautiful, it can also put a damper on holiday errands. For those of us who might be lagging behind on getting their holiday cards in the mail, we here at Chandra can help you out.

Dark Energy Trailer on YouTube

By now, you've probably seen the news stories on our exciting and important new work on dark energy. For those of you who want even more, take a look at this posting on YouTube. The main scientist behind these results, Alexey Vikhlinin of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, put together a great movie describing the new science.

Watch the video on Youtube

Doing More with More

Back in 2002, we released a colorful image of the star-forming region known as 30 Doradus (also called the Tarantula Nebula.) At the time, we thought it was a beautiful image – and it was – of this pocket of intense stellar birth and death in the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud.

30 Doradus
Chandra's 30 Doradus from 2002 (left) and 2008 (right)

X-ray 101

There are those of us who are experts, and then those of us who are not. Even some of us who have been working in X-ray astronomy can lose track of some of the basics. To help provide a little introduction or perhaps just a refresher, we’ve put together a little thing we like to call “X-ray 101”. It’s meant just to give a very quick overview of what Chandra is and what X-ray astronomy is all about.

baseball image from activity
A sample image from the activity

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