Unusual star a prime candidate for supernova - but when?
August 7
The star Eta Carinae is set to explode - but nobody quite knows when or how.
In a post featuring this unusual image, NASA said it could be next year, or one million years away (cosmic time is on a scale much different to ours).
"Eta Carinae's mass – about 100 times greater than our sun – makes it an excellent candidate for a full blown supernova," NASA wrote.
"Historical records do show that about 170 years ago Eta Carinae underwent an unusual outburst that made it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky."
It's the only star in the sky currently thought to emit natural laser light.
The shows two distinct "lobes" of the Homonculus Nebula bulging out from the central star.
"Diffraction spikes, caused by the telescope, are visible as bright multi-coloured streaks emanating from Eta Carinae's centre," NASA wrote.
"Some strange radial streaks are visible in red extending toward the image right. The lobes are filled with lanes of gas and dust which absorb the blue and ultraviolet light emitted near the centre. The streaks, however, remain unexplained."
Eagle Nebula
A glowing supernova remnant, a nebula shaped like a cat's paw and the iconic "Pillars of Creation" are just a few of the celestial objects that shine in 25 never-before-seen images captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to mark the telescope's 25th anniversary.
Chandra, named in honor of the late Indian American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, launched to space aboard the space shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999.
The crew, including STS-93 Commander Eileen Collins, deployed the telescope into its oval-shaped orbit, which takes Chandra on a path around Earth that is nearly one-third of the distance to the moon.
NGC 1850
"On behalf of the STS-93 crew, we are tremendously proud of the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its brilliant team that built and launched this astronomical treasure," Collins said in a statement shared in a NASA release.
"Chandra's discoveries have continually astounded and impressed us over the past 25 years."
So far, Chandra has taken nearly 25,000 observations of the universe.
NGC 1365
The telescope observes the cosmos through X-ray light, which is invisible to the human eye.
X-rays are released by some of the most energetic events and hottest objects in the universe, including exploded stars, material swirling around black holes, galactic collisions and even exoplanets.
MSH 15-52
"For a quarter century, Chandra has made discovery after amazing discovery," said Pat Slane, director of the Chandra X-ray Centre at the Harvard and Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, in a statement.
"Astronomers have used Chandra to investigate mysteries that we didn't even know about when we were building the telescope — including exoplanets and dark energy."
MACS J0035
But the future of the telescope could be in jeopardy due to NASA budget cuts, which threaten to prematurely conclude the mission by the end of this decade.
And without another premier X-ray observatory to immediately take its place, astronomy research could suffer.
Jupiter
The idea for the Chandra mission was first proposed in 1976 by astrophysicists Riccardo Giacconi and Harvey Tananbaum, who saw the importance of having a large X-ray telescope and initiated its design.
Along with the Hubble Space Telescope and now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, Chandra is one of NASA's "Great Observatories" launched near the turn of the 20th century that were designed to study the universe across different wavelengths of light.
The telescope has the highest-quality X-ray mirrors ever manufactured, which not only results in gorgeous imagery, but the ability to identify detailed structures that show the underlying physics of energetic cosmic objects, Slane said.
Cassiopeia A
During its mission, Chandra has studied the remains of exploded stars to see how matter and energy behave in space under the most extreme conditions.
Shortly after launch, the observatory focused on what has become an iconic celestial target: supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. Chandra has returned to this feature again and again, revealing new insights each time.
HB 5
The remnant is an expanding cloud of matter and energy released when a star exploded.
Over time, Chandra's X-ray data of the remnant has allowed astronomers to pinpoint a dense neutron star left by the explosion at the centre of the remnant, as well as "superfluid" found inside the neutron star.
The fluid suggests that the original massive star may have turned inside out as it exploded, which is helping astronomers to better understand the violent evolution of stars.
Cat's Paw nebula
The observatory has also glimpsed the birth of stars in the Cat's Paw nebula and the famed "Pillars of Creation" and peered into the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy to help astronomers study the supermassive black hole at its centre.
And Chandra has spied massive galaxy clusters that include hundreds of thousands of glittering galaxies, as well as the superheated soup of gas around the galaxies only visible in X-ray light.
Share a tip-off, video or photo with us
