{ "count": 12, "next": null, "previous": null, "results": [ { "id": 31296, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/31296/", "result_type": "Hyperwall Visual", "release_date": "2024-06-21T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Coming in Hot — NASA’s Chandra Checks Habitability of Exoplanets", "description": "Credits:Movie: Cal Poly Pomona/B. Binder; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss || chandra-exoplanets.00001_print.jpg (1024x576) [195.6 KB] || chandra-exoplanets.00001_searchweb.png (320x180) [78.4 KB] || chandra-exoplanets.00001_thm.png (80x40) [5.7 KB] || chandra-exoplanets.mp4 (1280x720) [63.9 MB] || chandra-exoplanets.webm (1280x720) [7.0 MB] || coming-in-hot-nasas-chandra-checks-habitability-of-exoplanets.hwshow [319 bytes] || ", "hits": 237 }, { "id": 14498, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14498/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2024-01-11T11:05:00-05:00", "title": "Finding A New Galactic 'Fossil'", "description": "Some 5 million years ago, a black hole eruption in the galaxy NGC 4945 set off a star-formation frenzy and shot a vast cloud of gas into intergalactic space. Watch and learn how two X-ray telescopes revealed the story.Music Credits: Universal Production Music\"Planetary Horizons\" by Jia Lee\"Eyes Peeled\" by Bard\"Sprinkle of Mischief\" by Ash and HaroldWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center", "hits": 127 }, { "id": 14317, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14317/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2023-03-28T13:50:00-04:00", "title": "NASA Missions Probe What May Be a 1-In-10,000-Year Gamma-ray Burst", "description": "The Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 revealed the infrared afterglow (circled) of the BOAT GRB and its host galaxy, seen nearly edge-on as a sliver of light extending to the burst's upper left. This animation flips between images taken on Nov. 8 and Dec. 4, 2022, one and two months after the eruption. Given its brightness, the burst’s afterglow may remain detectable by telescopes for several years. Each picture combines three near-infrared images taken at wavelengths from 1 to 1.5 microns and is 34 arcseconds across. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Levan (Radboud University); Image Processing: Gladys Kober || GRB_WFC3IR1108+1204_circled.gif (512x512) [3.5 MB] || ", "hits": 163 }, { "id": 30834, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30834/", "result_type": "Hyperwall Visual", "release_date": "2016-12-06T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "NASA's Astrophysics Fleet", "description": "Astrophysics Fleet || astro-fleet-spiral-07-24-2024_print.jpg (1024x575) [163.0 KB] || astro-fleet-spiral-07-24-2024.png (2560x1439) [2.0 MB] || astro-fleet-spiral-07-24-2024_searchweb.png (320x180) [85.2 KB] || astro-fleet-spiral-07-24-2024_thm.png (80x40) [7.4 KB] || nasas-astrophysics-fleet.hwshow [306 bytes] ||", "hits": 104 }, { "id": 12265, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12265/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2016-06-22T13:00:00-04:00", "title": "X-ray Echoes Map a 'Killer' Black Hole", "description": "NASA Goddard astronomer Erin Kara discusses the discovery of X-ray echoes from Swift J1644+57, a black hole that shattered a passing star. X-rays produced by flares near this million-solar-mass black hole bounced off the nascent accretion disk and revealed its structure. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterMusic: \"The Orion Arm\" and \"Particle Acceleration\" both from Killer Tracks.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Complete transcript available. || TD_Still.png (1920x1080) [11.0 MB] || TD_Still_print.jpg (1024x576) [109.7 KB] || TD_Still_searchweb.png (180x320) [91.6 KB] || TD_Still_thm.png (80x40) [7.0 KB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2_ProRes_1920x1080_2997.mov (1920x1080) [3.8 GB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2_youtube_hq.mov (1920x1080) [1.6 GB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2-HD_1080p.mov (1920x1080) [443.2 MB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2-Apple_Devices_Best.m4v (1920x1080) [295.2 MB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2_appletv.m4v (1280x720) [150.6 MB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2-Apple_HD_Compatible.m4v (960x540) [118.9 MB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2_appletv_subtitles.m4v (1280x720) [150.7 MB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2-Apple_HD_Compatible.webm (960x540) [31.7 MB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2_SRT_Captions.en_US.srt [5.3 KB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2_SRT_Captions.en_US.vtt [5.3 KB] || 12265_BH_Echoes_FINAL2_lowres.mp4 (480x272) [39.9 MB] || ", "hits": 194 }, { "id": 11609, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11609/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2014-07-22T10:00:00-04:00", "title": "NASA's Fermi Catches a 'Transformer' Pulsar", "description": "In late June 2013, an exceptional binary system containing a rapidly spinning neutron star underwent a dramatic change in behavior never before observed. The pulsar's radio beacon vanished, while at the same time the system brightened fivefold in gamma rays, the most powerful form of light, according to measurements by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.The system, known as AY Sextantis, is located about 4,400 light-years away in the constellation Sextans. It pairs a 1.7-millisecond pulsar named PSR J1023+0038 — J1023 for short — with a star containing about one-fifth the mass of the sun. The stars complete an orbit in only 4.8 hours, which places them so close together that the pulsar will gradually evaporate its companion. To better understand J1023's spin and orbital evolution, the system was routinely monitored in radio. These observations revealed that the pulsar's radio signal had turned off and prompted the search for an associated change in its gamma-ray properties.What's happening, astronomers say, are the last sputtering throes of the pulsar spin-up process. Researchers regard the system as a unique laboratory for understanding how millisecond pulsars form and for studying details of how accretion takes place on neutron stars. In J1023, the stars are close enough that a stream of gas flows from the sun-like star toward the pulsar. The pulsar's rapid rotation and intense magnetic field are responsible for both the radio beam and its powerful pulsar wind. When the radio beam is detectable, the pulsar wind holds back the companion's gas stream, preventing it from approaching too closely. But now and then the stream surges, pushing its way closer to the pulsar and establishing an accretion disk. When gas from the disk falls to an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km), processes involved in creating the radio beam are either shut down or, more likely, obscured. Some of the gas may be accelerated outward at nearly the speed of light, forming dual particle jets firing in opposite directions. Shock waves within and along the periphery of these jets are a likely source of the bright gamma-ray emission detected by Fermi. || ", "hits": 118 }, { "id": 30134, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30134/", "result_type": "Hyperwall Visual", "release_date": "2013-10-17T12:00:00-04:00", "title": "Physics of the Cosmos", "description": "Missions that make up Physics of the Cosmos Program || physics_of_the_cosmos_print.jpg (1024x574) [203.5 KB] || physics_of_the_cosmos.png (4104x2304) [10.6 MB] || physics_of_the_cosmos_searchweb.png (320x180) [97.9 KB] || physics_of_the_cosmos_thm.png (80x40) [6.8 KB] || For More Information || See [http://pcos.gsfc.nasa.gov](http://pcos.gsfc.nasa.gov) || ", "hits": 71 }, { "id": 11162, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11162/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-12-12T13:00:00-05:00", "title": "Astronomers Catch a Jet from a Binge-eating Black Hole", "description": "In January 2012, a new X-ray source flared and rapidly brightened in the Andromeda galaxy (M31), located 2.5 million light-years away. Classified as an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX), the object is only the second ever seen in M31 and became the target of an intense observing campaign by orbiting X-ray telescopes — including NASA's Swift — and radio observatories on the ground. These efforts resulted in the first detection of radio-emitting jets from a stellar-mass black hole outside our own galaxy. A ULX is thought to be a binary system containing a black hole that is rapidly accreting gas from its stellar companion. However, to account for the brilliant high-energy output, gas must be flowing into the black hole at a rate very near a theoretical maximum, a feeding frenzy that astronomers do not yet fully understand. As gas spirals toward a black hole, it becomes compressed and heated, eventually reaching temperatures where it emits X-rays. As the rate of matter ingested by the black hole increases, so does the X-ray brightness of the gas. At some point, the X-ray emission becomes so intense that it pushes back on the inflowing gas, theoretically capping any further increase in the black hole's accretion rate. Astronomers refer to this as the Eddington limit, after Sir Arthur Eddington, the British astrophysicist who first recognized a similar cutoff to the maximum luminosity of a star. Black-hole binaries in our galaxy that show accretion at the Eddington limit also exhibit powerful radio-emitting jets that move near the speed of light. Although astronomers know little about the physical nature of these jets, detecting them at all would confirm that the ULX is accreting at the limit and identify it as a stellar mass black hole. The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory first detected the ULX, dubbed XMMU J004243.6+412519 after its astronomical coordinates, on Jan. 15. Middleton and a large international team then began monitoring it at X-ray energies using XMM-Newton and NASA's Swift satellite and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The scientists conducted radio observations using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and the continent-spanning Very Long Baseline Array, both operated by the National Science Foundation in Socorro, N.M., and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array located at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory near Cambridge, England. In a paper published online by the journal Nature on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, the scientists reveal their successful detection of intense radio emission associated with a jet moving at more than 85 percent the speed of light. VLA data reveal that the radio emission was quite variable, in one instance decreasing by a factor of two in just half an hour. This tells astronomers that the region producing radio waves is extremely small in size — no farther across than the distance between Jupiter and the sun. Black holes have been conclusively detected in two varieties: \"lightweight\" ones created by stars and containing up to a few dozen times the sun's mass, and supermassive \"heavyweights\" of millions to billions of solar masses found at the centers of most big galaxies. Astronomers have debated whether many ULXs represent hard-to-find \"middleweight\" versions, containing hundreds to thousands of solar masses. || ", "hits": 113 }, { "id": 11109, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11109/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-10-12T10:00:00-04:00", "title": "X-ray Satellites Monitor the Clashing Winds of a Colossal Binary", "description": "One of the nearest and richest OB associations in our galaxy is Cygnus OB2, which is located about 4,700 light-years away and hosts some 3,000 hot stars, including about 100 in the O class. Weighing in at more than a dozen times the sun's mass and sporting surface temperatures five to ten times hotter, these ginormous blue-white stars blast their surroundings with intense ultraviolet light and powerful outflows called stellar winds. Two of these stars can be found in the intriguing binary system known as Cygnus OB2 #9. In 2011, NASA's Swift satellite, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory and several ground-based facilities took part in a campaign to monitor the system as the giant stars raced toward their closest approach. The observations are giving astronomers a more detailed picture of the stars, their orbits and the interaction of their stellar winds. An O-type star is so luminous that the pressure of its starlight actually drives material from its surface, creating particle outflows with speeds of several million miles an hour. Put two of these humongous stars in the same system and their winds can collide during all or part of the orbit, creating both radio emission and X-rays.In 2008, research showed that Cygnus OB2 #9 emitted radio signals that varied every 2.355 years. In parallel, Yael Naz || ", "hits": 93 }, { "id": 10991, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10991/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-07-03T08:00:00-04:00", "title": "A Young Star Flaunts its X-ray Spots", "description": "Using combined data from a trio of orbiting X-ray telescopes, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Japan-led Suzaku satellite, astronomers have obtained a rare glimpse of the powerful phenomena that accompany a still-forming star. A new study based on these observations indicates that intense magnetic fields drive torrents of gas into the stellar surface, where they heat large areas to millions of degrees. X-rays emitted by these hot spots betray the newborn star's rapid rotation.Astronomers first took notice of the young star, known as V1647 Orionis, in January 2004, near the peak of an outburst. The eruption had brightened the star so much that it illuminated a conical patch of dust now known as McNeil's Nebula. Both the star and the nebula are located about 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Orion. Astronomers quickly determined that V1647 Ori was a protostar, a stellar infant still partly swaddled in its birth cloud. Protostars have not yet developed the energy-generating capabilities of a normal star such as the sun, which fuses hydrogen into helium in its core. For V1647 Ori, that stage lies millions of years in the future. Until then, the protostar shines from the heat energy released by the gas that continues to fall onto it, much of which originates in a rotating circumstellar disk.The mass of V1647 Ori is likely only about 80 percent of the sun's, but its low density bloats it to nearly five times the sun's size. Infrared measurements show that most of the star's surface has a temperature around 6,400 degrees Fahrenheit (3,500 C), or about a third cooler than the sun's. Yet during outbursts, the protostar's X-ray brightness increases by 100 times and the temperature of its X-ray-emitting regions reaches about 90 million F (50 million C). The team found strong similarities among 11 separate X-ray light curves based on data from Chandra, Suzaku and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellites. These similarities allowed them to identify cyclic X-ray variations establishing that the star spins once each day. V1647 Ori is among the youngest stars whose spin rates have been determined using an X-ray-based technique.The cyclic X-ray changes represent the appearance and disappearance of hot regions on the star that rotate in and out of view. The model that best agrees with the observations, say the researchers, involves two hot spots of unequal brightness located on opposite sides of the star. Both spots are thought to be pancake-shaped areas about the size of the sun, but the more southerly spot is about five times brighter. || ", "hits": 86 }, { "id": 10942, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10942/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-05-31T09:00:00-04:00", "title": "X-ray 'Echoes' Probe Habitat
of Monster Black Hole", "description": "Astronomers using data from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite have found a long-sought X-ray signal from NGC 4151, a galaxy that contains a supermassive black hole. The discovery promises a new way to unravel what's happening in the neighborhood of these powerful objects. || ", "hits": 159 }, { "id": 10555, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10555/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2010-01-26T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Massive Merger of Galaxies is Most Powerful on Record", "description": "In 2004, an international team of scientists, led by a NASA-funded researcher, observed a nearby head-on collision of two galaxy clusters. The clusters smashed together thousands of galaxies and trillions of stars. It is one of the most powerful events ever witnessed. Such collisions are second only to the Big Bang in total energy output.The event was captured with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory. Scientists are calling the event the perfect cosmic storm: galaxy clusters that collided like two high-pressure weather fronts and created hurricane-like conditions, tossing galaxies far from their paths and churning shock waves of 100-million-degree gas through intergalactic space. The cluster, Abell 754 in the constellation Hydra, has been known for decades. However, the new observation reveals the merger may have occurred from the opposite direction than was previously thought.This unprecedented view of merger in action crystallizes the theory the universe built its magnificent hierarchal structure from the \"bottom up,\" essentially through mergers of smaller galaxies and galaxy clusters into bigger ones.Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe, containing hundreds to thousands of galaxies. || ", "hits": 322 } ] }