Chandra being deployed from the space shuttle Jets of hot gas pushing their way through space from a black hole, streams of X-rays blasting clouds of gas in a turbulent galaxy and a superdense star throwing charged particles into space like a cosmic catherine wheel were shown to impressed scientists. The images were taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory launched from the space shuttle last year. X-rays come from hot gas so Chandra homes in on cosmic violence such as exploded stars and matter being sucked into a black hole. In one of its most remarkable images, Chandra has seen details of a gas cloud that resembles a gigantic cosmic crossbow. The gas cloud, part of the wreckage of an exploded star called the Vela supernova remnant, is formed by a pulsar, a rapidly rotating superdense neutron star that spins out rings and jets of high energy particles.
Astronomers can trace the X-ray jet all the way into the neutron star.
A strange inner ring can be seen for the first time. It is thought to be a shock wave caused by matter rushing away from the neutron star. This cloud is embedded in a much larger cloud produced by the supernova and has a swept-back shape because of its motion through the larger cloud. Galactic cannibal Chandra has also observed the supergiant galaxy Perseus A, showing how that galaxy has grown by cannibalising gas and other galaxies in its vicinity. For the first time, astronomers can see an X-ray shadow cast by a smaller galaxy as its gas is stripped away by the enormous central galaxy.