The Beautiful Universe: Chandra in HD

Latest Episodes:

A Tour of X-rays From a Newborn Star Hint at Our Sun's Earliest Days Jun 18, 2020

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By detecting an X-ray flare from a very young star using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers have reset the timeline for when stars like the Sun start blasting high-energy radiation into space.

A Tour of a New Galactic Center Adventure in Virtual Reality Jun 02, 2020

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By combining data from telescopes with supercomputer simulations and virtual reality (or "VR"), a new visualization allows you to experience 500 years of cosmic evolution around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

A Tour of a Black Hole Outburst Caught on Video May 29, 2020

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Astronomers have caught a black hole hurling hot material into space at close to the speed of light.

A Tour of Bending the Bridge Between Two Galaxy Clusters May 11, 2020

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Several hundred million years ago, two galaxy clusters collided and then passed through each other. This mighty event released a flood of hot gas from each galaxy cluster that formed an unusual bridge between the two objects.

A Tour of a Star Survives Close Call with a Black Hole Apr 23, 2020

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Astronomers may have discovered a new kind of survival story: a star that had a brush with a giant black hole and lived to tell the tale through exclamations of X-rays.

A Tour of the Universe's Expansion May Not Be The Same In All Directions Apr 08, 2020

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One of the fundamental ideas of cosmology is that everything looks the same in all directions if you look over large enough distances. A new study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton is challenging that basic notion.

A Tour of Chandra Data Tests "Theory of Everything" Mar 19, 2020

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Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have made one of the first experimental tests of string theory, a set of models intended to tie together all known forces, particles, and interactions.

A Tour of the Biggest Explosion Ever Seen in the Universe Feb 27, 2020

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Astronomers have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the Universe in a galaxy cluster 390 million light years away.

A Tour of a Cosmic Jekyll and Hyde Feb 20, 2020

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Astronomers have spotted a double star system is flip-flopping between two alter egos using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes.

A Tour of 3D Visualizations Jan 29, 2020

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These six visualizations represent work to explore rich datasets from powerful telescopes, like Chandra, by developing three-dimensional simulations.