Chandra Animated Gifs & Other Shareables (2024)

1. Crab Nebula Timelapse (2002)
The dynamic rings, wisps and jets around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula as observed in X-ray light by Chandra.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

2. Tycho's Supernova Remnant
A supernova remnant located about 10,000 light years from Earth.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

3. Pictor A
A giant jet spanning continuously for over 300,000 light years is seen blasting out of the galaxy Pictor A.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

4. Vela Pulsar Jet
Much like an untended firehose, the jet bends and whips about spectacularly at half the speed of light. Bright blobs move in the jet at similar speeds.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

5. Time-lapse of Cassiopeia A
This velocity is explained by a special type of energy loss by the blast wave.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

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2000-2001 Close-up

2000-2001 Full field

6. Time-lapse of Crab Nebula
The dynamic rings, wisps and jets around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula as observed in X-ray light by Chandra.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

7. Cassiopeia A: Chandra 3-color X-ray
This 3-color version of the Chandra First Light data displays a wealth of detail and drama.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

8. G299.2-2.9
This debris field, which glows brightly in X-rays, was left over when a star exploded about 4,500 years ago.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

9. M51
This galaxy, nicknamed the "Whirlpool," is a spiral galaxy, like our Milky Way, located about 30 million light years from Earth.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

10. Crab Nebula
These images of the Crab Nebula show how extremely dense, rapidly rotating neutron stars produced when a massive star explodes can create clouds of high-energy particles light years across that glow brightly in X-rays.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

11. Hercules A
Some galaxies have extremely bright cores, suggesting that they contain a supermassive black hole that is pulling in matter at a prodigious rate. Astronomers call these "active galaxies," and Hercules A is one of them.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

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12. Black Holes
Black Holes (def.): A dense, compact object whose gravitational pull is so strong that - within a certain distance of it - nothing can escape, not even light.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

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13. Supernovas
Supernova (def.): Explosive death of a star, caused by the sudden onset of nuclear burning in a white dwarf star, or gravitational collapse of the core of massive star followed by a shock wave that disrupts the star.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

14. Cas A: Supernova Remnant in 3D
This visualization of Cassiopeia A shows that there are two main components to this supernova remnant: a spherical component in the outer parts of the remnant and a flattened (disk-like) component in the inner region.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

15. SN 2006gy: An Exploding Star
The extremely massive star shed some of its outer layers in a large eruption prior to its violent collapse. The explosion then plows into the expelled cooler gas, creating a brilliant light show.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

16. Black Hole Merger
This gif shows a merger of two galaxies that forms a single galaxy with two centrally located supermassive black holes surrounded by disks of hot gas. The black holes orbit each other for hundreds of millions of years before they merge to form a single supermassive black hole that sends out intense gravitational waves.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

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17. Chandra Spacecraft
On July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Chandra is one of NASA's four "Great Observatories," along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

18. Astronomy fact #1
There is a supermassive black hole in the center of our very ownMilky Way Galaxy. It is called Sagittarius A* and it is 26,000 lightyears away from Earth.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

19. Astronomy fact #2
If a baseball were made of neutron star material it would weigh about 20 trillion kg, or about 40 times the estimated weight of the entire human population.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

20. Astronomy fact #3
Depending on its size, when a star dies it can explode in a supernova which may temporarily outshine everything else in the galaxy it resides.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

21. Astronomy fact #4
A quasar radiates so much energy that if it was only the size of a flashlight it would produce as much light as all the houses and businesses in the entire Los Angeles basin!
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

22. Astronomy fact #5
Planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets! They are dying stars that looked like planets when viewedthrough the small telescope of the past.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

23. Astronomy fact #6
In the future our Sun will become a white dwarf and be one/millionth its current size!
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

24. Astronomy fact #7
Brown dwarfs weren't discovered until 1995 because they were so faint, but it is now estimated that in the Milky Way there are just as many as normal stars.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

25. Astronomy fact #8
More than one thousand Earths can fit inside Jupiter. Impressive until you realize more than one MILLION Earths could fit inside the Sun.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

26. Astronomy fact #9
It is thought that the galaxy cluster Perseus is emanating sound waves in the note of B flat, 57 octaves below middle-C which is a million billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

27. Astronomy fact #10
In billions of years, when our Milky Way galaxy collides with the Andromeda galaxy, it is unlikely that any stars will collide because they are all so far apart from each other.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

28. Astronomy fact #11
The electrical power required to operate NASA's premier X-ray telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, is about the same power a hair dryer uses.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

29. Astronomy fact #12
If the Sun suddenly turned into a black hole of the same mass (which it won't), Earthwould continue to orbit it without being pulled in.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

30. Astronomy fact #14
Starburst galaxies can form stars tens, even hundreds of times faster than normal galaxies.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

31. Astronomy fact #15
The first NASA mission commanded by a woman, Commander Eileen Collins, deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1999.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

32. Astronomy fact #16
Massive young stars sometimes destroy the dusty discs of smaller stars, preventing planets from forming.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

33. Astronomy fact #17
In our galaxy, supernovas occur about once every 50 years.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

34. Astronomy fact #18
It would take light 650 years to travel from one end of the Tarantula Nebula to the other.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

35. Astronomy fact #19
Brown dwarfs are a thousand times less luminous than our Sun.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

36. Astronomy fact #21
If a magnetar flew past Earth within 100,000 miles, its ultra-magnetic field would destroy the data on every credit card.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

37. Astronomy fact #22
Light travels so fast that it could circle the Earth 7.5 times in 1 second.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

38. Astronomy fact #23
It would take light about 8 million years to get across the galaxy cluster El Gordo.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

39. Astronomy fact #24
Dr. Belinda Wilkes is the first female Director of a NASA Great Observatory.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

40. Astronomy fact #25
What makes up 96% of our Universe is a mystery astronomers are trying to solve.
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

41. Astronomy fact #26
In 1572 through 1574, Tycho's Supernova was so bright that it was visible during the day!
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

42. Astronomy fact #27
Supermassive black holes can have the mass of many millions of suns!
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(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)