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The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has imaged a gush of elements blasted out by an exploding star.
By Dan Sorid
Staff Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
30 June 2000
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chandra_ejection_000629 The Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the best-ever tool for imaging high-energy events in the universe, has imaged a gush of elements blasted out by an exploding star.
A star explodes The images have surprised astronomers, said Wallace Tucker, a science spokesman for the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The images show three elements -- silicon, calcium and iron -- flying out from supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, which is 11,000 light-years from Earth. While astronomers had thought that lighter elements like calcium would be pushed out farther during star explosions, in this case iron, the heaviest of the three elements, appears to have been expelled the farthest. 
Compare the above image of ejected iron... 
with this image of calcium. Surprisingly, the iron is actually farther out. "The model they had for this kind of explosion is that the star, before it exploded, built up an onionskin layer with heavy elements [on the inside of the star]," Tucker said. "Somehow the iron got out ahead of everything." The pictures actually come from one exposure taken over a period of 14 hours, and later separated out by element type. The star may have turned its elements inside out before exploding, Tucker speculated, though astronomers are not certain what happened. Another surprise is the way the star seems to be ejecting material mostly through a single jet, which appears on the upper-left of the pictures. "This may be saying something about the explosion that our models don't have," he said. Chandra was launched in June 1999 by Space Shuttle Columbia, becoming the world's most powerful X-ray observatory. In its first year, Chandra has stunned astronomers with its findings on black holes and other high-energy stellar bodies.
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