Friday, May 31, 2019

An X-ray View of Space

If you had X-ray Vision what would space look like?  Now NASA has revealed what you would see.  Outer Space looking a whole lot busier than usual in an image Jackson Pollock might have admired:



Visit the NASA web page that explores this image:


The same image with some prominent x-ray sources labelled

NICER is NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR.  Learn all about it at the...



NASA also has some great education videos about all the different wavelengths of light that make up  the electromagnetic spectrum, including x-rays:

The spectrum below displays the uses to which we put various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum:


For more on the above illustration, take the NASA Science:

Tour of the Electromagnetic Spectrum


Science at NASA video about x-rays



The TED Educational Service  has an excellent video on the history and nature of x-rays:

How X-rays see through your skin - Ge Wang



X-ray Astronomy is a new way of looking at outer space and reveals much more than the light we see can reveal.  The Chandra X-ray Observatory is NASA's flagship mission for X-ray astronomy and has a fascinating and informative website:
         


Cambridge University provides an excellent multipage...


 

Fearful Symmetry Triptych

While grappling with the works of William Blake and his foremost literary interpreter, Northrop Frye in his book Fearful Symmetry , I c...