Keen-sighted X-ray telescope debuts.Astronomers have started peering through a newly launched X-ray telescope with spectacular results. The $1.5 billion Chandra X-Ray Observatory Chandra X-ray Observatory U.S. X-ray space telescope. It was named after astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and was launched into orbit in 1999. Its mirror, with an aperture of 1.2 m (4 ft) and a focal length of 10 m (33 ft), produces unprecedented resolution. , formerly known as the Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics astrophysics, application of the theories and methods of physics to the study of stellar structure, stellar evolution, the origin of the solar system, and related problems of cosmology. Facility (SN: 1/3/98, p. 8), resolves details approximately 10 times finer and detects sources 20 to 50 times fainter than its predecessors could. In tests of one of its X-ray cameras, the 14-meter-long, 4.6-ton satellite made brief exposures that boast extraordinary detail. The pictures unveil previously hidden features of a supernova remnant A supernova remnant (SNR) is the structure resulting from the gigantic explosion of a star in a supernova. The supernova remnant is bounded by an expanding shock wave, and consists of ejected material expanding from the explosion, and the interstellar material it sweeps up near the constellation Cassiopeia and a jet of radiation 6 billion light years away from Earth. On Aug. 28, scientists first tested one of Chandra's gratings, similar to prisms, for spreading radiation into a spectrum of lines. The telescope was focused on Capella, a binary star binary star or binary system, pair of stars that are held together by their mutual gravitational attraction and revolve about their common center of mass. some 40 light years away. The trial revealed a forest of distinct marks where previous X-ray spectra showed only a blur. The instrument, named after the late Nobel laureate Noun 1. Nobel Laureate - winner of a Nobel prize Nobelist laureate - someone honored for great achievements; figuratively someone crowned with a laurel wreath Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (SN: 1/18/97, p. 39), will have a tremendous impact on astronomy, predicts Harvey D. Tananbaum, who directs the Chandra X-Ray Center in Cambridge, Mass. "You will be able to pick out things you haven't seen before," he says, such as stars forming in central galaxies of galactic clusters. Astronomers have been waiting for Chandra for a long time: Tananbaum and others proposed the project in 1976. "When you've been waiting 15 years for Christmas, it had better be very good," says Richard F. Mushotzky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center. GSFC employs approximately 10,000 civil servants and contractors, and is located approximately 6.5 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Md., who joined the project's science oversight board in 1984. "I think we're going to have a very good Christmas," he predicts.--P. Weiss |
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