SPACE.com Image Gallery: Chandra's Photo Album

Chandra’s 2004 Photo Album

The Antennae

07 Jan 04 - This montage of Chandra images shows a pair of interacting galaxies known as The Antennae. Rich deposits of neon, magnesium, and silicon were discovered in the interstellar gas of this system. The top image, a wide field X-ray view, reveals spectacular loops of hot gas spreading out from the southern part of The Antenna into intergalactic space. Also shown are huge clouds of multimillion-degree gas and bright point like sources due to neutron stars and black holes. The image is color coded so that low, medium and high energy X-rays appear as red, green and blue, respectively. The image at the lower right is processed and color-coded to show regions rich in iron (red), magnesium (green) and silicon (blue). These are the types of elements that form the ultimate building blocks for habitable planets. Click to enlarge.

NASA/CXC/SAO/G. Fabbiano et al.