An overview of the Chandra mission and goals, Chandra's namesake, top 10 facts.
Classroom activities, printable materials, interactive games & more.
Overview of X-ray Astronomy and X-ray sources: black holes to galaxy clusters.
All Chandra images released to the public listed by date & by category
Current Chandra press releases, status reports, interviews & biographies.
A collection of multimedia, illustrations & animations, a glossary, FAQ & more.
A collection of illustrations, animations and video.
Chandra discoveries in an audio/video format.
Animations & Video: Featured Image Tours
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Click for high-resolution animation
1. Tour of 30 Doradus
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only Chandra's X-ray image of the Tarantula Nebula gives scientists a close-up view of the drama of star formation and star evolution. The Tarantula, also known as 30 Doradus, is one of the most active star-forming regions in a galaxy close to the Milky Way. Massive stars in 30 Doradus are producing intense radiation and searing winds of multimillion-degree gas. These winds carve out gigantic super-bubbles in the surrounding gas as seen in the Chandra data. Other massive stars have raced through their evolution and exploded catastrophically as supernovas. These events leave behind pulsars and expanding remnants that trigger the collapse of giant clouds of dust and gas to form new generations of stars.
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(NASA/CXC/Penn State/L.Townsley, et al.)

Related Chandra Images:

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2. Tour of Abell 85
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only The composite image shows the galaxy cluster known as Abell 85, which is located about 740 million light years from Earth. The purple emission is multi-million degree gas detected in X-rays by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the other colors show galaxies in an optical image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This galaxy cluster is one of 86 observed by Chandra to trace how dark energy has stifled the growth of these massive structures over the last 7 billion years. Galaxy clusters are the largest collapsed objects in the Universe and are ideal for studying the properties of dark energy, the mysterious form of repulsive gravity that is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Understanding the nature of dark energy is one of the biggest mysteries in science today.
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(Credits: X-ray (NASA/CXC/SAO/A.Vikhlinin et al.); Optical (SDSS))

Related Chandra Images:

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3. Tour of Cassiopeia A
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only Cassiopeia A is a supernova remnant found embedded in the constellation that bears its name, which is known as the queen in Greek mythology. Along with virtually all modern telescopes, the Chandra X-ray Observatory has devoted a great deal of time to examine this aftermath of an exploded star. The latest results from Chandra reveal new details about the neutron star, which is the ultra-dense core of the star that exploded. For the first time, astronomers have determined that this stellar nub has an incredibly thin atmosphere of carbon on its surface. This is an important clue in deducing the true nature of this mysterious source which lies at the center of one of astronomy's most famous objects.
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(X-ray: NASA/CXC/Southampton/W. Ho et al.; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss.)

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4. Tour of Cepheus B
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only A new study from two of NASA's "Great Observatories" provides fresh insight into how some stars are born, along with a beautiful new image of a stellar nursery in our own Milky Way Galaxy. While astronomers have long understood that stars and planets form from the collapse of a cloud of gas, the main causes of this process have remained mysterious. Now, research on an object known as Cepheus B, a cloud of hydrogen about 2400 light years from Earth, helps answer that question. X-rays seen by Chandra show where the young stars in the cloud are, while infrared emission observed by Spitzer reveals whether these stars contain planet-forming disks around them. Taken together, these data reveal that radiation from massive stars is triggering a new generation of stars to be born. This happens more often than previously thought.
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(X-ray (NASA/CXC/PSU/K. Getman et al.); IR (NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J. Wang et al.))

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5. Tour of E0102-72.3
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only The supernova remnant known as E0102 was one of the targets that Chandra first observed after its launch in 1999. Now, some ten years later, new X-ray data from Chandra have been used to produce this spectacular image. E0102 is located about 190 thousand light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way. It was created when a star that was much more massive than the sun, exploded, an event that would have been visible from the southern hemisphere on Earth over one thousand years ago. The information captured in this new image, which includes optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals new clues about the geometry of the remnant. This in turn helps astronomers better understand the details of the explosion that created the remnant we see today.
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(Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/MIT/D.Dewey et al. & NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DePasquale); Optical (NASA/STScI))

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6. Tour of Galactic Center
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only This image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals a wealth of exotic objects and high-energy features at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. In this new and deep image from Chandra, red represents lower-energy X-rays, green shows the medium range, and blue indicates the higher-energy X-rays Chandra can detect. The hundreds of small dots show emission from material around black holes and other dense stellar objects like neutron stars. A supermassive black hole -- some four million times more massive than the Sun -- resides within the bright region to the right of center. The diffuse X-ray light comes from gas heated to millions of degrees by outflows from the supermassive black hole, winds from giant stars, and stellar explosions.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al.)

Related Chandra Images:

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7. Tour of Galactic Ridge
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only This sequence begins with an infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope of the central region of the Milky Way. We then zoom into a region about 1.4 degrees away from the center of the galaxy where the Chandra X-ray Observatory focused its attention for about twelve days' worth of time. This region is known as the Galactic Ridge, because earlier X-ray observatories found a structure of diffuse emission stretching across the plane of the galaxy. The new long Chandra observation shows that this X-ray haze is actually composed of thousands of individual sources, like stars and binary systems.
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(X-ray (NASA/CXC/TUM/M.Revnivtsev et al.); IR (NASA/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE Team))

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8. Tour of GRS 1915
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only We start with an optical and infrared image that shows the crowded area around the object known as GRS 1915+105, or GRS 1915 for short. Next is a close-up of the Chandra image of GRS 1915, which is located near the plane of the Milky Way. GRS 1915 is a so-called micro-quasar that contains a black hole about fourteen times the mass of the sun, which in turn is pulling material off a nearby companion star. With its high-energy transmission grating, Chandra has observed GRS 1915 eleven times since 1999. These studies reveal that a jet from the black hole in GRS 1915 may be periodically choked off when a hot wind is driven off the disk surrounding the black hole. Conversely, once the wind dies down, the jet can re-emerge. These results suggest that this type of black hole may have a mechanism for regulating the rate at which it grows.
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(X-ray (NASA/CXC/Harvard/J.Neilsen); Optical & IR (Palomar DSS2))

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9. Tour of Hydra A
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only This composite image of the Hydra A galaxy cluster shows 10-million-degree gas observed by Chandra and jets of radio emission observed by the Very Large Array. The galaxies in the cluster are seen in optical light by two ground-based telescopes. At the center of Hydra A is a supermassive black hole that has experienced powerful outbursts. These outbursts pushed the material surrounding the black hole, creating giant cavities seen in the Chandra data. These cavities were then filled with material from jets seen in the radio data. The Chandra data reveal that the gas located along the direction of the radio jets is enhanced with iron and other metals. Scientists think that these elements, vital for stars, planets, and ultimately life, were forged in supernova explosions in the large galaxy at the center of the cluster.
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(X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Waterloo/C.Kirkpatrick et al.; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA; Optical: Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope/DSS)

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10. Tour of JKCS041
QuicktimeMPEG Audio Only The most distant galaxy cluster yet has been found some 10.2 billion light-years from Earth. This record-breaking object is known as JKCS041, and is seen as it was when the Universe was just one quarter of its present age. This composite image of the object contains x-rays from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, shown as the blue, diffuse cloud, as well as optical and infrared data from ground-based telescopes. Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe held together by gravity. Scientists have calculated how quickly these clusters could start assembling after the Big Bang. And JKCS041 lies just inside that window. Future observations will provide scientists with an opportunity to learn about how the Universe evolved at this crucial stage.
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(X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF/S.Andreon et al Optical: DSS; ESO/VLT)

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