The supernova remnant known as the Crab Nebula, as seen in x-rays (blue), infrared, and visual light.
Image courtesy CXC/SAO/ESA/ASU/Caltech/U.Minn/NASA
Tomorrow NASA is slated to launch its newest orbiting observatory, which will peer into the mysterious high-energy x-ray universe with unprecedented detail.
Used on Earth for medical imaging and in airport security machines, high-energy x-rays are naturally produced by some of the most exotic objects in the universe. (Also see related pictures: “X-Ray History—Hidden Kitten, Quackery, and More.”)
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuStar, will seek out these rays to capture images of black holes, neutron stars, and other cosmic bodies with a hundred times more sensitivity and ten times better resolution than previous spacecraft.
Current x-ray telescopes—such as NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and theEuropean Space Agency’s XMM-Newton—can get clear looks at objects that emit lower energy x-rays, but due to technical challenges, these craft have trouble bringing higher energy wavelengths into focus.
NuStar will use a row of 133 fingernail-thin mirrors stacked like Russian dolls to focus light onto state-of-the-art detectors, producing crisp pictures in high-energy wavelengths.
“We’re going to look at the remnants of stars that exploded long ago and also be poised to respond quickly—within a day—to any new explosions like supernovae or gamma-ray bursts,” said NuStar’s principal investigator Fiona Harrison, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
