Tour: NASA's Chandra Opens Treasure Trove of Cosmic Delights

Humanity has "eyes" that can detect all different types of light through telescopes around the globe and a flotilla of observatories in space. From radio waves to gamma rays, this "multiwavelength" approach to astronomy is crucial to getting a complete understanding of objects in space.

This compilation gives examples of images from different missions and telescopes being combined to better understand the science of the universe. Each of these images contains data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as other telescopes. The collection includes various types of objects found throughout space. For example, Supernova 1987A and the Helix Nebula show how different the lives of stars can be. The former involved a star that exploded when it ran out of fuel in a violent explosion, while the other, the planetary nebula, shows the outer layers of a star that slowly puffed out into space. Eta Carinae is a double star system that has astronomers wondering what it will do next. M82 and the Cartwheel illustrate the life of galaxies, which come in different shapes and sizes and with histories of their own. And Abell 2744 is a galaxy cluster, one of the largest objects in the Universe held together by gravity.

Together, these images demonstrate the possibilities when data from across the electromagnetic spectrum are assembled.

These and other data were incorporated into supercomputer simulations at NASA Ames. The result is this remarkable visualization that spans the simulation's full size of three light years, or about 18 trillion million miles, around Sagittarius A*. The visualization delivers a 3D perspective through the use of VR goggles. By providing a six-degrees-of-freedom VR experience, the user can look and move in any direction they choose. The user can also play the simulation at different speeds and choose between seeing all 25 winds or just one wind to observe how the individual elements affect each other in this environment.

This visualization is the latest way that Chandra is bringing the wonders of the center of the Milky Way a little bit closer to home for everyone to experience.