Description: Chandra's X-ray image (blue) combined with Hubble's optical image (red and green) reveal towering filaments of warm (about ten thousand degrees Celsius) and hot (about ten million degrees Celsius) gas that blend to create the bright horseshoe-shaped feature near the center. This feature is thought to have been formed when a superwind of hot gas collided with cold gas in the galactic disk. The full extent of the superwind shows up as a fainter conical cloud of X-ray emission surrounding the filaments. Superwinds originate in the centers of galaxies either from activity generated by supermassive black holes, or by bursts of supernova activity.

Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray

Date: 2003

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Gift line: NASA/CXC/STScI/U.North Carolina/G.Cecil