NASA: beautiful images to celebrate the 20 years of the Chandra telescope

In order, you can observe on this series of image: Abell 2146; the center of the Milky Way where Sagittarius A * is hiding; 30 Doradus (the Tarantula Nebula); Cygnus OB2; NGC 604; G292 © NASA / CXC

The X-ray observatory Chandra celebrated its 20th anniversary on July 23rd. Launched in 1999 by the Columbia Space Shuttle, this telescope is, with Hubble, one of the largest and most prolific space observatories currently in orbit. 

To celebrate Chandra's 20 years and mark the occasion, NASA has just released a new series of breathtaking images!

Six images to celebrate Chandra's 20 years

NASA is talking a lot about it at the moment, and for good reason, the agency that has just commemorated 50 years of the first steps of the Man on the Moon is about to repeat the feat by 2024 with his ambitious program Artemis! 

But, the moon is far from the only focus of NASA. If the US space agency has allowed us to relive the Apollo moon landing 11 with an impressive website for 50 years of the mission, it does not mean forgetting to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the launch of Chandra , his telescope for the observation of X-ray sources that "  helped to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos  ". 

On this occasion, six new images of celestial objects, evidence of the effectiveness of this telescope that "  continues to make amazing scientific discoveries year after year,  " according to Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division.

Unpublished images of cosmic objects

 Image credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / UMass / D. Wang et al .; Radio: NRF / Sarao / MeerKAT

We have selected here two particularly sumptuous images. The first shows the center of our galaxy, which contains the famous black hole Sagittarius A *. It was obtained by combining Chandra's data with that of the MeerKAT radio telescope and its 64 antennas located in South Africa.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Drake et al; H-alpha: Univ. of Hertfordshire/INT/IPHAS; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Spitzer

This second image was made thanks to Chandra as well as to the Spitzer infrared telescope and to Newton's terrestrial telescope. We can see Cygnus OB2, a swarm of relatively young massive stars (estimated between one and seven million years) where stars follow a fairly fast life cycle given their masses. This area contains one of the largest known stars, the hypergiant red NML Cygni. 

After having traveled more than 2.4 billion kilometers since 1999and completed more than 2,700 times around the Earth, the Chandra telescope should retire by 2024. One day or another Chandra should actually have consumed all its reserves of hydrazine, the only fuel to feed its propulsion system.