13 photos from NASA's most powerful X-ray space telescope reveal the invisible universe (2024)

FAQs

Which new NASA telescope will provide X-ray views of the universe? ›

It launched on Sept. 6, 2023. It's designed to detect X-rays with energies up to 12,000 electron volts and will study the universe's hottest regions, largest structures, and objects with the strongest gravity. For comparison, the energy of visible light is 2 to 3 electron volts.

Similar to the way an optical telescope increases our eye's ability to see faint stars, an X-ray telescope can concentrate the light from an X-ray star onto an electronic eye. An imaging detector can view several X-ray emitting objects simultaneously, or can create pictures of regions of diffuse X-ray emission.

When astronomers try to take a picture of a cosmic object from the ground, that picture ends up blurry. Hubble's position above the atmosphere lets it observe steady, unwavering light from cosmic objects and thus achieve higher resolution.

The Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful and most complex telescope ever launched into space . It's design and development history stretches back before the Hubble Space Telescope was launched.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is the world's most powerful X-ray telescope. It has eight-times greater resolution and is able to detect sources more than 20-times fainter than any previous X-ray telescope.

X-rays allow us to observe supernova remnants, hot gases in galaxy clusters, black holes, and neutron stars.

Chandra carries four very sensitive mirrors nested inside each other. The energetic X-rays strike the insides of the hollow shells and are focussed onto electronic detectors at the end of the 9.2- m (30-ft.) optical bench.

From space, x-ray telescopes collect photons from a given region of the sky. The photons are directed onto the detector where they are absorbed, and the energy, time, and direction of individual photons are recorded.

Before 1999, astronomers had estimated that the age of the universe was between 7 and 20 billion years. But with advances in technology and the development of new techniques we now know the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, with an uncertainty of only 200 million years. How did this come to be?

Can you look back in time with a telescope? ›

Strictly speaking, when telescopes look at the light from distant galaxies, they are not literally looking back in time. The past no longer exists, so no one can directly look at it. Instead, the telescopes are looking at the present-time pattern of a beam of light.

Space telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope have allowed us to capture views of galaxies and nebulas far away from our own solar system. Set to launch in December 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful space telescope ever built.

We can see light from 13.8 billion years ago, although it is not star light – there were no stars then. The furthest light we can see is the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is the light left over from the Big Bang, forming at just 380,000 years after our cosmic birth.

When Hubble launched in 1990, it was expected to have a lifespan of about 15 years. Largely because of five successful astronaut servicing missions to the telescope, Hubble's technology was upgraded and improved, and the telescope remains scientifically productive to this day.

The telescope sees into the past because the light from distant objects takes time to reach us. The further away an object is, the longer it takes for its light to reach us. Therefore, when we look at distant objects, we are seeing them as they were in the past.

The objective of the Next Generation X-ray Optics team (NGXO) led by Dr. William Zhang is to develop X-ray mirror technology with ever higher resolution, lighter weight, and lower cost to enable NASA's future X-ray observatories, such as Lynx and AXIS that are currently under evaluation by the Decadal Survey.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is a telescope specially designed to detect X-ray emission from very hot regions of the Universe such as exploded stars, clusters of galaxies, and matter around black holes.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched at 7:20 a.m. EST Friday, Dec. 25, 2021, on an ESA-provided Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America.

X-ray telescope, instrument designed to detect and resolve X-rays from sources outside Earth's atmosphere. Because of atmospheric absorption, X-ray telescopes must be carried to high altitudes by rockets or balloons or placed in orbit outside the atmosphere.