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NASA releases first Chandra photos

Posted by Hemos on from the fun-with-space-telescopes dept.

Gedanken writes "Nasa has released the first images from the new Chandra Project X-Ray telescope and they are spectacular. It will be researching high energy events such as supernovas, quasars and black holes. "

1 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What the... by mperrin · · Score: 3

    X-rays aren't visible to human eyes at all, so of course you have to process the image to display them in visible wavelengths. This is standard practice for all astronomy outside of visible light (which is most astronomy these days, actually.) The image of Cas A was mapped onto a red scale, where

    white = highest intensity
    yellow = high intensity
    red = low intensity
    black = lowest or no intensity

    The quasar image was done similarly, only using a blue scale rather than red. Right now, these colors are pretty much arbitrary, but later on, we'll probably start coming up with color maps that have a bit more science behind them, especially once we get into spectroscopic imaging.

    Trust me, you don't want us to start displaying the images in "true-color" X-ray unless you have some passing desire to fry your eyes. Oops. ;-)

    - Marshall
    mperrin@cfa.harvard.edu