Staring Into SpaceThe Cat's Eye Nebula roils and radiates in a new composite picture blending visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope and x-ray wavelengths (tinted purple) captured by NASA's orbiting Chandra observatory.The image is part of Chandra's first systematic survey of nearby planetary nebulae. So-named because 18th-century stargazers mistook the gas bubbles for gas-giant planets, planetary nebulae are glowing shells of material thrown off by dying stars.Years ago Hubble pictures forced a rethink of how stars die. "Now these Chandra images have helped us get even more data, because x-rays tell us things that Hubble doesn't tell us about the very last stages of the deaths of these stars," astrophysicist Joel Kastner told National Geographic News.(Related picture: Hubble spies the Cat's-Eye Nebula.)—Brian Handwerk
Image courtesy Joel Kastner et al, NASA/CXC/RIT/STScI

New Pictures: Planetary Nebulae Shine in X-Ray Vision

Purple haze is providing forensic evidence on star deaths in luminous shots from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

October 17, 2012