Astrophysics: Observing the Universe Vertical Video

Watch how astronomers used data from NASA’s NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) to study a mysterious cosmic phenomenon called a quasi-periodic eruption, or QPE.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Music: "Superluminal" by Lee Groves [PRS] and Peter Geogre Marett [PRS], Universal Production Music

Find more information and content here.

Complete transcript available.

Like cream stirred into coffee, an enormous wave swirls gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster.

The expanding spiral of gas, discovered by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Space Telescope with radio observations and computer simulations, is about twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.

The flyby of a small galaxy cluster likely caused this gravitational disturbance billions of years ago, and vast waves will form and roll at the Perseus cluster's periphery for hundreds of millions of years before dissipating.

Credit: NASA/John ZuHone/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Music: "The Undiscovered" from Killer Tracks

Find more information and content here.

Complete transcript available.

In photography and astronomy, the resolution of images affects how much detail they contain. Higher resolution means crisper images. Your latest camera probably takes better images than your older ones did, and it’s similar with our satellites. As technology improves, so does the data we collect. Check out the difference between the cosmic microwave background images from our COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) and WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellites, which launched 12 years apart.

Video credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team

Find more information and content here.

Complete transcript available.

Observed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Space Telescope since 2001, pulsar wind nebula MSH 15-52 is formed by particles flung away from a rapidly spinning stellar corpse. More recently, our IXPE telescope stared at this creepy sight for about 17 days. IXPE mapped the nebula’s magnetic field, helping us learn more about the “bones” that form its basic shape and the pulsar swirling at its core.

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./R. Romani et al. (Chandra); NASA/MSFC (IXPE); Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DECaPS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt

Music: “Castle of Doom,” Richard Breakspear [BMI], Universal Production Music

Complete transcript available.

If you had gamma-ray eyes, the Moon would shine brighter than the Sun!

This is what the Moon looks like to our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which studies the highest-energy form of light. This sequence shows exposure times from two months to over 10 years, revealing how the view improves as Fermi collects a greater number of gamma rays.

Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

Find more information and content here.

Complete transcript available.

Our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope completes a full sweep of the gamma-ray sky every three hours. Using 12 years of data, scientists produced this all-sky map to reveal the relatively steady gamma-ray sources Fermi sees. The bright band across the center is the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. The bright yellow and red spots scattered throughout are a mix of sources including nearby pulsars and distant black-hole-powered galaxies. Watch the video to meet a few of them.

Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

Music: “Gathering Courage,” Sam Connelly [PRS], Universal Production Music

Find more information and content here.

Complete transcript available.

Visualizing data can produce mesmerizing results.

When our Fermi satellite, which launched this week in 2008, detected a high-energy pulse from a galaxy called 3C 279, our scientists produced this “raindrop” visualization to show how the flare progressed. Each drop’s size and color represents the energy of one gamma-ray photon.

3C 279 is a famous blazar, a galaxy whose high-energy activity is powered by a central supermassive black hole. As matter falls toward the black hole, some particles race away at nearly light-speed along a pair of jets pointed in opposite directions. A blazar is bright because one of these jets happens to be aimed almost straight at us.

During this flare in 2015, 3C 279 became four times brighter than the Vela pulsar, which is typically the brightest gamma-ray object in the sky.

Video credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

Music credit: "She is a Sun Ray," Claude Pelouse [SACEM], Universal Production Music

Find more information and content here.

Complete transcript available.

The first recorded eruption of T CrB was in 1217, and the last event occurred in 1946! And now it could happen again, any day. If it behaves like it has in the past, it could erupt before September, but there’s no guarantee.

Nova explosions — not to be confused with supernovae — occur when a white dwarf in a binary star system collects material flowing out from a red giant companion. At some point, it collects enough material to cause an explosion, resulting in a brilliant outburst that blasts much of the collected gas into space. Unlike supernova explosions, the star isn’t destroyed in a nova. And in the case of T CrB, the explosion happens over and over, about every 80 years.

Even though we know the general pattern, we can’t predict the exact timing of this eruption and will have to keep our eyes on the sky. Whenever T CrB goes off again, scientists are prepared with a slew of spacecraft and ground-based telescopes to collect data across different wavelengths of light and learn more about this recurring cosmic phenomenon.

Credits: NASA/Conceptual Image Lab/Goddard Space Flight Center

Music: “Succumbing to Silence,” Adam Fligsten [ASCAP], Universal Production Music

Find the original animation here.

Complete transcript available.