Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) is orbiting around Earth in a highly elliptical orbit of 64 hours.
Chandra Observatory was launched on the space shuttle Columbia in July 23, 1999.
There are lots of objects which emit X rays, for example Stars, Supernovae, Supernova remnants, gases falling into neutron stars and black holes etcetera.
But the mirrors used in Chandra Observatory are not like in any optical telescope where parabolic mirrors are used. If the X rays fall directly on a mirror they'll be absorbed. So the mirrors are shaped like a hollow cylinder which narrows the X rays until they are focused on an electronic detector, as shown in the video.
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| Artistic image of CXO: wikipedia.org |
Chandra Observatory was launched on the space shuttle Columbia in July 23, 1999.
There are lots of objects which emit X rays, for example Stars, Supernovae, Supernova remnants, gases falling into neutron stars and black holes etcetera.
But the mirrors used in Chandra Observatory are not like in any optical telescope where parabolic mirrors are used. If the X rays fall directly on a mirror they'll be absorbed. So the mirrors are shaped like a hollow cylinder which narrows the X rays until they are focused on an electronic detector, as shown in the video.
Last year in December Chandra released a new image of the 11 thousand light years distant Supernova remnant named Cassiopeia A. In this image different colours show different elements. Silicon is shown in red, Sulfur in yellow, Calcium in green and Iron in purple.
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| chandra.harvard.edu |
A similar but more colorful composite image was also released using the data from Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X ray Observatory.
The best thing about these images is that you can see the remaining core of the star as a dot (white or blue) in the center which is a neutron star.
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