Chandra Release - April 18, 2024

Visual Description: 3D Instagram Experiences

This image contains four separate images presented in a 2 by 2 grid. Top left, Vela pulsar. Top right, Tycho's Supernova Remnant. Bottom left, Helix Nebula. Bottom right, Cat's Eye Nebula.

The Vela Pulsar, the aftermath of a collapsed and exploded star sending a jet of particles into space. The pulsar resembles a soft, pillowy, lavender bean in a pocket of blue gas. A faint stream of gas, the X-ray jet, appears to shoot from the pocket, heading into the distance at our upper right. Purple markings in the lavender bean shape strongly resemble narrow eyes and an open mouth, giving the pulsar a squinting happy face. In this image, X-ray light detected by Chandra is shown in blues and purples.

The Tycho supernova remnant is a spherical cloud of reds, greens, and blues set against a starry sky. The cloud is ejected material still propagating from a star that exploded in 1572, as seen from Earth. Here, the supernova resembles a fluffy pink cotton ball. The dense, translucent cloud is streaked with hazy veins, and mottled with red and blue. The edges of the cloud appear to be highlighted in soft white. Upon close inspection, a thin red-violet line can be discerned around the outer edge of the multicolored cloud. The red-violet line shows where electrons have been accelerated to high energies, producing X-rays detected by Chandra. This provides evidence that supernova remnants are a major source of energetic particles, including electrons and protons, which continually hit Earth's atmosphere.

The Helix Nebula is a planetary nebula, the end phases of the life of a Sun-like star. Helix resembles a creature's eye, both in shape and in detail. At the center of the nebula, where the pupil would reside, an orb shaped cloud glows in dark pink. Surrounding the orb, where the colored iris of an eye would be, is a dramatic mix of color in blues, browns, and golds that appear somewhat striated, very similar to a human eye. These striations extend to the left and right of the otherwise circular iris structure, as though they had been gently pulled from the two o'clock and seven o'clock positions until the material formed faint wisps. Surrounding the iris structure are roughly spherical puffs of blue haze. The entire canvas is dotted with stars in red, green, and blue.

The Cat's Eye Nebula is an image of an ethereal shape surrounded by concentric circles. The shape is a huge cloud of gas and dust blown off of a dying star. The concentric circles are bubbles expelled by the star over time. The dust cloud resembles a translucent pastry pulled to golden yellow points near our upper right and lower left, with a blob of bright purple jelly inside the bulbous pale blue core. The jelly-like center represents X-ray data from Chandra. The outer cloud and translucent circles represent visible light data from the Hubble Space Telescope.