General

John ZuHone at the Chandra Operation Control Center with his son. Credit: John ZuHone

We welcome John ZuHone, an astrophysicist on the Advanced CCD Imaging Survey (ACIS) team at the Chandra X-ray Center, as our guest blogger. Prior to Chandra, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the MIT Kavli Institute, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. John received his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Chicago. His research interests include merging galaxy clusters and the physics of the intracluster medium.

My interest in astronomy started when I was very young. When I began to read, there was one book that was bought for me that I started taking everywhere—My First Book About Space. The pictures of planets, star clusters, and galaxies taken by telescopes and imaged by the first solar system probes launched by NASA captivated me (I still have this book on my shelf, though it’s a little worn out these days). Another book that I read over and over again was The Stars: A New Way to See Them by H. A. Rey, the writer of the Curious George series. Rey was frustrated by how the constellations were drawn in many star charts—they didn’t look anything like the names they were given. So he re-drew the lines—and most of the time, he was able to make it work! To this day, when I look up at a night sky filled with stars, I see the constellations as Rey drew them.

A symphonic event at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on November 16th 2024 provided a remarkable opportunity to celebrate 25 years with the Chandra X-ray Observatory on the Mall in Washington, D.C. The free program, entitled "Above and Beyond," was built around Chandra’s milestone anniversary and featured the premiere of "Where Parallel Lines Converge." This original piece by composer Sophie Kastner, created with Chandra and alongside CXC experts, was inspired by the Chandra sonifications of the Galactic Center region. The ensemble musicians were from the 21st Century Consort and their performance was outstanding. In addition to the music, there was a selection of space imagery/video that helped showcase Chandra science. Dr. Kimberly Arcand of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) was on hand for a special conductor’s discussion and question-and-answer session before the performance along with other invited guests, and there was a brief reception afterwards.

The Chandra team has been working behind the scenes with the Smithsonian Institution's Digitization 3D Program, to create a new scrolling interactive for Cassiopeia A.

The term "scrollytelling" is real, even if you might not find it in every dictionary. (Though if you look in online ones – especially any that include online terminology – you will.) You may have experienced scrollytelling yourself if you’ve read or explored longer pieces of content on certain platforms or news outlets.

The idea is simple: as you scroll down the page, new information in the form of text, images, and videos will appear. It’s an effective way to convey layers of information, and we’re excited to share this new resource that will let you explore Cassiopeia A in a new way! Cas A, as it’s known, is arguably Chandra's most famous data of a supernova remnant, the leftover material from a star that exploded 340 years ago. Chandra has observed Cas A many times over its 25-year mission, and we have discovered lots about this exploded star -- including how it looks in three dimensions.

It’s been over a quarter of a century since the Space Shuttle Columbia deployed NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory into space during mission STS-93. Chandra’s highly elliptical orbit takes it over one-third of the distance to the Moon at its farthest point.

Although Chandra's closest approach to Earth fluctuates extensively with long-term variations in the orbit, it is still typically well more than 600 miles (1000 kilometers) above the surface. Compare that to the International Space Station which orbits our planet at an altitude of about 250 miles, and the Hubble Space Telescope which sits about 320 miles above Earth. It’s clear that Chandra is rather far away from us.

Twenty-five years ago, the Space Shuttle Columbia launched into space carrying the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Press releases from the Chandra X-ray Center, CfA, and Smithsonian shared 25 new images with Chandra data to publicize this momentous milestone. A dedicated webpage to Chandra’s 25th birthday, plus the new images and press release, can be found at https://chandra.si.edu/25th/