Chandra Release - December 4, 2013

Visual Description: Circinus X-1

The youngest member of an important class of objects, X-ray binaries, was found using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Australia Compact Telescope Array. A composite image shows the X-rays in blue and radio emission in purple, which have been overlaid on an optical field of view from the Digitized Sky Survey in pale gold.  The image is dominated by shades of purple with a large splotch of ice blue, depicting a nebula on a dark background, littered with golden stars. The shape of the nebula resembles an elongated skull with a single oversized blue topaz in one of its eye sockets.   X-ray binaries consist of a dense object -- either a black hole or a neutron star -- in orbit with a star like the Sun. Researchers found that the neutron star in Circinus X-1 is less than 4,600 years old, making the X-ray binary much younger than any other known in the Milky Way. This discovery allows astronomers to study a critical phase after a supernova explosion and the birth of a neutron star.