Orbit 17 +++ Space and beyond
galaxies, science, exploration, astronomy (blog)
Posts tagged Chandra
NASA extends life of Chandra X-ray mission, funding until 2013
Jan 9th
After a decade of scanning the universe, NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory has a new lease on life – one that could extend its mission through 2013, and possibly longer.
NASA officially extended the 10-year-old Chandra mission by extending its science support contract by $172 million, which will fund the effort through 2013 and bring its total base cost up to $545 million. Options for two more life extensions for the healthy space telescope could increase its value to $913 million, NASA officials said.
“I think it’s very good news,” said astronomer Roger Brissenden, manager and flight director of the Chandra X-ray Center overseeing the space telescope’s science operations. “It shows they really do have confidence that the spacecraft is healthy and able to do good science.”
NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory Captures Star Torn Apart by Black Hole
Jan 7th
Star Death is A Violent Thing Especially when it’s ripped apart by a middleweight black hole. X-ray: NASA/CXC/UA/J. Irwin et al. Optical: NASA/STScI
We know that super-massive black holes can devour stars, and we know that stellar-mass black holes born of collapsing stars often anchor at the center of galaxies, but the elusive middleweight black hole is more theory than knowledge. While scientists have long thought they are hiding out there, hard evidence of their existence has been hard to come by. But NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, in conjunction with data from the Magellan telescopes, has captured what looks like the guts of a white dwarf star after being ripped apart by an intermediate-mass black hole.
Peering into the globular cluster at the center of elliptical galaxy NGC 1399 — 65 million light years from Earth — a burst of bright light can be seen above and left of center. Chandra’s image (the shot above is composite, with X-ray light in blue laid over a background snapped by Hubble) shows that the bright emission of light is an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX). ULXs are a rare class of objects that emit more X-rays than stars but less than the supermassive black holes at the center of quasars. Exactly what makes up a ULX source remains a mystery, but it’s been suggested they are mid-sized black holes with masses somewhere between hundreds and thousands of times that of our sun.