Fact Sheet
Last Gasps of a Dying Star
Shock waves from an exploding star glow brightly as they ram into material around the star in this image from Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the third of NASA's "Great Observatories." Astronauts deployed the observatory from space shuttle Columbia on July 23. Early tests showed that most of its instruments were performing as expected. Chandra's first target was Cassiopeia A, the remnant of an exploded star. Material from the star rams into clouds of gas around the star at millions of miles an hour. These collision zones emit X-ray energy, which Chandra's detectors "see." The tiny dot at the center of this cloud may be a neutron star or black hole -- the crushed corpse of the exploded star. Although astronomers have studied Cassiopeia A in other wavelengths for many years, this is the first time they have seen the possible "remnant" star.
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