NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Collection

Chandra's First Light: Cassiopeia A

Cosmic wreckage from the detonation of a massive star is the subject of this official first image [ http://www1.msfc.na…] from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory [ http://chandra.nasa…]. The supernova remnant, known as Cassiopeia A [ http://www1.msfc.na…], was produced when a star exploded around 300 years ago in this northern sky constellation [ http://www.seds.org…]. It is revealed here in unprecedented detail in the light of X-rays [ http://imagine.gsfc…] - photons with thousands of times the energy of visible light. Shock waves expanding [ http://wonka.physic…] at 10 million miles-per-hour are seen to have heated this 10 light-year diameter bubble of stellar debris to X-ray emitting temperatures of 50 million kelvins [ http://lamar.colost…]. The tantalizing bright speck near the bubble's center could well be the dense, hot remnant of the stellar core collapsed to form a newborn neutron star [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…]. With this and other first light images [ http://chandra.harv…], the Chandra Observatory is still undergoing check out operations in preparation for its much anticipated exploration of the X-ray sky. Chandra was launched [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] aboard the space shuttle Columbia in July.

//chandra.nasa.gov/" >Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov/]

Chandra

supernova remnant

X-ray

Cassiopeia A

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Washington, D.C.

Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC)

Cassiopeia

Visible Light

Columbia

Space Shuttle Orbiter

Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO)

http://antwrp.gsfc.…

SPD-APOD-ap990827