A bouquet of thousands of stars in bloom has arrived. This composite image contains the deepest X-ray image ever made of the spectacular star forming region called 30 Doradus.

By combining X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue and green) with optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (yellow) and radio data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (orange), this stellar arrangement comes alive.

Otherwise known as the Tarantula Nebula, 30 Dor is located about 160,000 light-years away in a small neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way known as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Because it one of the brightest and populated star-forming regions to Earth, 30 Dor is a frequent target for scientists trying to learn more about how stars are born.

With enough fuel to have powered the manufacturing of stars for at least 25 million years, 30 Dor is the most powerful stellar nursery in the local group of galaxies that includes the Milky Way, the LMC, and the Andromeda galaxy.

The massive young stars in 30 Dor send cosmically strong winds out into space. Along with the matter and energy ejected by stars that have previously exploded, these winds have carved out an eye-catching display of arcs, pillars, and bubbles.

A dense cluster in the center of 30 Dor contains the most massive stars astronomers have ever found, each only about one to two million years old. (Our Sun is over a thousand times older with an age of about 5 billion years.)

This new image includes the data from a large Chandra program that involved about 23 days of observing time, greatly exceeding the 1.3 days of observing that Chandra previously conducted on 30 Dor. The 3,615 X-ray sources detected by Chandra include a mixture of massive stars, double-star systems, bright stars that are still in the process of forming, and much smaller clusters of young stars.

There is a large quantity of diffuse, hot gas seen in X-rays, arising from different sources including the winds of massive stars and from the gas expelled by supernova explosions. This data set will be the best available for the foreseeable future for studying diffuse X-ray emission in star-forming regions.

The long observing time devoted to this cluster allows astronomers the ability to search for changes in the 30 Dor’s massive stars. Several of these stars are members of double star systems and their movements can be traced by the changes in X-ray brightness.

A paper describing these results appears in the July 2024 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

https://www.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

Visual Description

This release features a highly detailed composite image of a star-forming region of space known as 30 Doradus, shaped like a bouquet, or a maple leaf.

30 Doradus is a powerful stellar nursery. In 23 days of observation, the Chandra X-ray telescope revealed thousands of distinct star systems. Chandra data also revealed a diffuse X-ray glow from winds blowing off giant stars, and X-ray gas expelled by exploding stars, or supernovas.

In this image, the X-ray wind and gas takes the shape of a massive purple and pink bouquet with an extended central flower, or perhaps a leaf from a maple tree. The hazy, mottled shape occupies much of the image, positioned just to our left of center, tilted slightly to our left. Inside the purple and pink gas and wind cloud are red and orange veins, and pockets of bright white light. The pockets of white light represent clusters of young stars. One cluster at the heart of 30 Doradus houses the most massive stars astronomers have ever found.

The hazy purple and pink bouquet is surrounded by glowing dots of green, white, orange, and red. A second mottled purple cloud shape, which resembles a ring of smoke, sits in our lower righthand corner.

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov

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Astronomers have taken a crucial step in showing that the most massive black holes in the universe can create their own meals. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) provide new evidence that outbursts from black holes can help cool down gas to feed themselves.

This study was based on observations of seven clusters of galaxies. The centers of galaxy clusters contain the universe’s most massive galaxies, which harbor huge black holes with masses ranging from millions to tens of billions of times that of the Sun. Jets from these black holes are driven by the black holes feasting on gas.

These images show two of the galaxy clusters in the study, the Perseus Cluster and the Centaurus Cluster. Chandra data represented in blue reveals X-rays from filaments of hot gas, and data from the VLT, an optical telescope in Chile, shows cooler filaments in red.

The results support a model where outbursts from the black holes trigger hot gas to cool and form narrow filaments of warm gas. Turbulence in the gas also plays an important role in this triggering process.

According to this model, some of the warm gas in these filaments should then flow into the centers of the galaxies to feed the black holes, causing an outburst. The outburst causes more gas to cool and feed the black holes, leading to further outbursts.

This model predicts there will be a relationship between the brightness of filaments of hot and warm gas in the centers of galaxy clusters. More specifically, in regions where the hot gas is brighter, the warm gas should also be brighter. The team of astronomers has, for the first time, discovered such a relationship, giving critical support for the model.

This result also provides new understanding of these gas-filled filaments, which are important not just for feeding black holes but also for causing new stars to form. This advance was made possible by an innovative technique that isolates the hot filaments in the Chandra X-ray data from other structures, including large cavities in the hot gas created by the black hole’s jets.

The newly found relationship for these filaments shows remarkable similarity to the one found in the tails of jellyfish galaxies, which have had gas stripped away from them as they travel through surrounding gas, forming long tails. This similarity reveals an unexpected cosmic connection between the two objects and implies a similar process is occurring in these objects.

This work was led by Valeria Olivares from the University of Santiago de Chile, and was published Monday in Nature Astronomy. The study brought together international experts in optical and X-ray observations and simulations from the United States, Chile, Australia, Canada, and Italy. The work relied on the capabilities of the MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) instrument on the VLT, which generates 3D views of the universe.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

https://www.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

Visual Description

This release features composite images shown side-by-side of two different galaxy clusters, each with a central black hole surrounded by patches and filaments of gas. The galaxy clusters, known as Perseus and Centaurus, are two of seven galaxy clusters observed as part of an international study led by the University of Santiago de Chile.

In each image, a patch of purple with neon pink veins floats in the blackness of space, surrounded by flecks of light. At the center of each patch is a glowing, bright white dot. The bright white dots are black holes. The purple patches represent hot X-ray gas, and the neon pink veins represent filaments of warm gas. According to the model published in the study, jets from the black holes impact the hot X-ray gas. This gas cools into warm filaments, with some warm gas flowing back into the black hole. The return flow of warm gas causes jets to again cool the hot gas, triggering the cycle once again.

While the images of the two galaxy clusters are broadly similar, there are significant visual differences. In the image of the Perseus Cluster on the left, the surrounding flecks of light are larger and brighter, making the individual galaxies they represent easier to discern. Here, the purple gas has a blue tint, and the hot pink filaments appear solid, as if rendered with quivering strokes of a paintbrush. In the image of the Centaurus Cluster on the right, the purple gas appears softer, with a more diffuse quality. The filaments are rendered in more detail, with feathery edges, and gradation in color ranging from pale pink to neon red.

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov

Jan. 24, 2025

NASA’s NICER Continues Science Operations Post Repair

NASA crew aboard the International Space Station installed patches to the agency’s NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) mission during a spacewalk on Jan. 16. NICER, an X-ray telescope perched near the station’s starboard solar array, resumed science operations later the same day.

The patches cover areas of NICER’s thermal shields where damage was discovered in May 2023. These thin filters block sunlight while allowing X-rays to pass through. After the discovery, the NICER team restricted their observations during the station’s daytime to avoid overwhelming the mission’s sensitive detectors. Nighttime observations were unaffected, and the team was able to continue collecting data for the science community to make groundbreaking measurements using the instrument’s full capabilities.

The repair went according to plan. Data since collected shows the detectors behind the patched areas are performing better than before during station night, and the overall level of sunlight inside NICER during the daytime is reduced substantially.

While NICER experiences less interference from sunlight than before, after analyzing initial data, the team has determined the telescope still experiences more interference than expected. The installed patches cover areas of known damage identified using astronomical observations and from photos taken by both external robotic cameras and astronauts inside the space station. Measurements collected since the repair and close-up, high-resolution photos obtained during the spacewalk are providing new information that may point the way toward further daytime data collection.

In the meantime, NICER continues operations with its full measurement capabilities during orbit night to enable further trailblazing discoveries in time domain and multimessenger astrophysics.

Media contact: Alise Fisher, NASA Headquarters / Claire Andreoli, NASA Goddard

June 8, 2023

Sunlight ‘Leak’ Impacting NASA’s NICER Telescope, Science Continues

On Tuesday, May 22, NASA’s NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer), an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station, developed a “light leak,” in which unwanted sunlight enters the instrument. While analyzing incoming data since then, the team identified an impact to daytime observations. Nighttime observations seem to be unaffected.

The team suspects that at least one of the thin thermal shields on NICER’s 56 X-ray Concentrators has been damaged, allowing sunlight to reach its sensitive detectors.

To mitigate the effects on measurements, the NICER team has limited daytime observations to objects far away from the Sun’s position in the sky. The team has also updated commands to NICER that automatically lower its sensitivity during the orbital day to reduce the effects from sunlight contamination. The team is evaluating these changes and assessing additional measures to reduce the impact on science observations.

To date, more than 300 scientific papers have used NICER observations, and the team is confident that NICER will continue to produce world-class science.

Media contact: Alise Fisher, NASA Headquarters / Claire Andreoli, NASA Goddard

An effort to find some of the biggest, most active black holes in the universe provides a better estimate for the ratio of hidden to unhidden behemoths.

Multiple NASA telescopes recently helped scientists search the sky for supermassive black holes — those up to billions of times heavier than the Sun. The new survey is unique because it was as likely to find massive black holes that are hidden behind thick clouds of gas and dust as those that are not.

Astronomers think that every large galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole at its center. But testing this hypothesis is difficult because researchers can’t hope to count the billions or even trillions of supermassive black holes thought to exist in the universe. Instead they have to extrapolate from smaller samples to learn about the larger population. So accurately measuring the ratio of hidden supermassive black holes in a given sample helps scientists better estimate the total number of supermassive black holes in the universe.

The new study published in the Astrophysical Journal found that about 35% of supermassive black holes are heavily obscured, meaning the surrounding clouds of gas and dust are so thick they block even low-energy X-ray light. Comparable searches have previously found less than 15% of supermassive black holes are so obscured. Scientists think the true split should be closer to 50/50 based on models of how galaxies grow. If observations continue to indicate significantly less than half of supermassive black holes are hidden, scientists will need to adjust some key ideas they have about these objects and the role they play in shaping galaxies.

Hidden Treasure

Although black holes are inherently dark — not even light can escape their gravity — they can also be some of the brightest objects in the universe: When gas gets pulled into orbit around a supermassive black hole, like water circling a drain, the extreme gravity creates such intense friction and heat that the gas reaches hundreds of thousands of degrees and radiates so brightly it can outshine all the stars in the surrounding galaxy.

The clouds of gas and dust that surround and replenish the bright central disk may roughly take the shape of a torus, or doughnut. If the doughnut hole is facing toward Earth, the bright central disk within it is visible; if the doughnut is seen edge-on, the disk is obscured.

Most telescopes can rather easily identify face-on supermassive black holes, though not edge-on ones. But there’s an exception to this that the authors of the new paper took advantage of: The torus absorbs light from the central source and reemits lower-energy light in the infrared range (wavelengths slightly longer than what human eyes can detect). Essentially, the doughnuts glow in infrared.

These wavelengths of light were detected by NASA’s Infrared Astronomical Satellite, or IRAS, which operated for 10 months in 1983 and was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. A survey telescope that imaged the entire sky, IRAS was able to see the infrared emissions from the clouds surrounding supermassive black holes. Most importantly, it could spot edge-on and face-on black holes equally well.

IRAS caught hundreds of initial targets. Some of them turned out to be not heavily obscured black holes but galaxies with high rates of star formation that emit a similar infrared glow. So the authors of the new study used ground-based, visible-light telescopes to identify those galaxies and separate them from the hidden black holes.

To confirm edge-on, heavily obscured black holes, the researchers relied on NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array), an X-ray observatory also managed by JPL. X-rays are radiated by some of the hottest material around the black hole. Lower-energy X-rays are absorbed by the surrounding clouds of gas and dust, while the higher-energy X-rays observed by NuSTAR can penetrate and scatter off the clouds. Detecting these X-rays can take hours of observation, so scientists working with NuSTAR first need a telescope like IRAS to tell them where to look.

“It amazes me how useful IRAS and NuSTAR were for this project, especially despite IRAS being operational over 40 years ago,” said study lead Peter Boorman, an astrophysicist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “I think it shows the legacy value of telescope archives and the benefit of using multiple instruments and wavelengths of light together.”

Numerical Advantage

Determining the number of hidden black holes compared to nonhidden ones can help scientists understand how these black holes get so big. If they grow by consuming material, then a significant number of black holes should be surrounded by thick clouds and potentially obscured. Boorman and his coauthors say their study supports this hypothesis.

In addition, black holes influence the galaxies they live in, mostly by impacting how galaxies grow. This happens because black holes surrounded by massive clouds of gas and dust can consume vast — but not infinite — amounts of material. If too much falls toward a black hole at once, the black hole starts coughing up the excess and firing it back out into the galaxy. That can disperse gas clouds within the galaxy where stars are forming, slowing the rate of star formation there.

“If we didn’t have black holes, galaxies would be much larger,” said Poshak Gandhi, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and a coauthor on the new study. “So if we didn’t have a supermassive black hole in our Milky Way galaxy, there might be many more stars in the sky. That’s just one example of how black holes can influence a galaxy’s evolution.”

More About NuSTAR

A Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at the University of California, Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. ASI provides the mission’s ground station and a mirror data archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information on NuSTAR, visit:

www.nustar.caltech.edu

News Media Contact

Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov

2025-002

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International teams of astronomers monitoring a supermassive black hole in the heart of a distant galaxy have detected features never seen before using data from NASA missions and other facilities. The features include the launch of a plasma jet moving at nearly one-third the speed of light and unusual, rapid X-ray fluctuations likely arising from near the very edge of the black hole.

The source is 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located about 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. It harbors a central black hole with a mass equivalent to about 1.4 million Suns.

“In 2018, the black hole began changing its properties right before our eyes, with a major optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray outburst,” said Eileen Meyer, an associate professor at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County). “Many teams have been keeping a close eye on it ever since.”

She presented her team’s findings at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland. A paper led by Meyer describing the radio results was published Jan. 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

After the outburst, the black hole appeared to return to a quiet state, with a lull in activity for nearly a year. But by April 2023, a team led by Sibasish Laha at UMBC and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, had noted a steady, months-long increase in low-energy X-rays in measurements by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) telescope on the International Space Station. This monitoring program, which also includes observations from NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) and ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton mission, continues.

The increase in X-rays triggered the UMBC team to make new radio observations, which indicated a strong and highly unusual radio flare was underway. The scientists then began intensive observations using the NRAO’s (National Radio Astronomy Observatory) VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array) and other facilities. The VLBA, a network of radio telescopes spread across the U.S., combines signals from individual dishes to create what amounts to a powerful, high-resolution radio camera. This allows the VLBA to detect features less than a light-year across at 1ES 1927+654’s distance.

Radio data from February, April, and May 2024 reveals what appear to be jets of ionized gas, or plasma, extending from either side of the black hole, with a total size of about half a light-year. Astronomers have long puzzled over why only a fraction of monster black holes produce powerful plasma jets, and these observations may provide critical clues.

“The launch of a black hole jet has never been observed before in real time,” Meyer noted. “We think the outflow began earlier, when the X-rays increased prior to the radio flare, and the jet was screened from our view by hot gas until it broke out early last year.”

A paper exploring that possibility, led by Laha, is under review at The Astrophysical Journal. Both Meyer and Megan Masterson, a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who also presented at the meeting, are co-authors.

Using XMM-Newton observations, Masterson found that the black hole exhibited extremely rapid X-ray variations between July 2022 and March 2024. During this period, the X-ray brightness repeatedly rose and fell by 10% every few minutes. Such changes, called millihertz quasiperiodic oscillations, are difficult to detect around supermassive black holes and have been observed in only a handful of systems to date. 

“One way to produce these oscillations is with an object orbiting within the black hole’s accretion disk. In this scenario, each rise and fall of the X-rays represents one orbital cycle,” Masterson said.  

If the fluctuations were caused by an orbiting mass, then the period would shorten as the object fell ever closer to the black hole’s event horizon, the point of no return. Orbiting masses generate ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. These waves drain away orbital energy, bringing the object closer to the black hole, increasing its speed, and shortening its orbital period.

Over two years, the fluctuation period dropped from 18 minutes to just 7 — the first-ever measurement of its kind around a supermassive black hole. If this represented an orbiting object, it was now moving at half the speed of light. Then something unexpected happened — the fluctuation period stabilized.

“We were shocked by this at first,” Masterson explained. “But we realized that as the object moved closer to the black hole, its strong gravitational pull could begin to strip matter from the companion. This mass loss could offset the energy removed by gravitational waves, halting the companion’s inward motion.”

So what could this companion be? A small black hole would plunge straight in, and a normal star would quickly be torn apart by the tidal forces near the monster black hole. But the team found that a low-mass white dwarf — a stellar remnant about as large as Earth — could remain intact close to the black hole’s event horizon while shedding some of its matter. A paper led by Masterson summarizing these results will appear in the Feb. 13 edition of the journal Nature.

This model makes a key prediction, Masterson notes. If the black hole does have a white dwarf companion, the gravitational waves it produces will be detectable by LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), an ESA mission in partnership with NASA that is expected to launch in the next decade.

By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contacts:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Jill Malusky
304-456-2236
jmalusky@nrao.edu
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Va.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague will install patches to the agency’s NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) X-ray telescope on the International Space Station as part of a spacewalk scheduled for Jan. 16. Hague, along with astronaut Suni Williams, will also complete other tasks during the outing.

NICER will be the first NASA observatory repaired on-orbit since the last servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009.

Hague and other astronauts, including Don Pettit, who is also currently on the space station, rehearsed the NICER patch procedures in the NBL (Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory), a 6.2-million-gallon indoor pool at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, in 2024. 

“We use the NBL to mimic, as much as possible, the conditions astronauts will experience while preforming a task during a spacewalk,” said Lucas Widner, a flight controller at KBR and NASA Johnson who ran the NICER NBL sessions. “Most projects outside the station focus on maintenance and upgrades to components like solar panels. It’s been exciting for all of us to be part of getting a science mission back to normal operations.”

From its perch near the space station’s starboard solar array, NICER studies the X-ray sky, including erupting galaxies, black holes, superdense stellar remnants called neutron stars, and even comets in our solar system. 

But in May 2023, NICER developed a “light leak.” Sunlight began entering the telescope through several small, damaged areas in the telescope’s thin thermal shields. During the station’s daytime, the light reaches the X-ray detectors, saturating sensors and interfering with NICER’s measurements of cosmic objects. The mission team altered their daytime observing strategy to mitigate the effect. 

The team also developed a plan to cover the largest areas of damage using wedge-shaped patches. Hague will slide the patches into the telescope’s sunshades and lock them into place. 

“We designed the patches so they could be installed either robotically or by an astronaut,” said Steve Kenyon, NICER’s mechanical engineering lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “They’re installed using a tool called a T-handle that the astronauts are already familiar with.”

The NBL contains life-size mockups of sections of the space station. Under the supervision of a swarm of scuba divers, a pair of astronauts rehearse exiting and returning through an airlock, traversing the outside of the station, and completing tasks. 

For the NICER repair, the NBL team created a full-scale model of NICER and its surroundings near the starboard solar array. Hague, Pettit, and other astronauts practiced taking the patches out of their caddy, inserting them into the sunshades, locking them into place, and verifying they were secure. 

The task took just under an hour each time, which included the time astronauts needed to travel to NICER, set up their tools, survey the telescope for previously undetected damage, complete the repair, and clean up their tools. 

Practice runs also provided opportunities for the astronauts to troubleshoot how to position themselves so they could reach NICER without touching it too often and for flight controllers to identify safety concerns around the repair. 

Being fully submerged in a pool is not the same as being in space, of course, so some issues that arose were “pool-isms.” For example, astronauts sometimes drifted upward while preparing to install the patches in a way unlikely to happen in space. 

Members of the NICER team, including Kenyon and the mission’s principal investigator, Keith Gendreau at NASA Goddard, supported the NBL practice runs. They helped answer questions about the physical aspects of the telescope, as well as science questions from the astronauts and flight controllers. NICER is the leading source of science results on the space station. 

“It was awesome to watch the training sessions and be able to debrief with the astronauts afterward,” Gendreau said. “There isn’t usually a lot of crossover between astrophysics science missions and human spaceflight. NICER will be the first X-ray telescope serviced by astronauts. It’s been an exciting experience, and we’re all looking forward to the spacewalk where it will all come together.”

The NICER telescope is an Astrophysics Mission of Opportunity within NASA’s Explorers Program, which provides frequent flight opportunities for world-class scientific investigations from space utilizing innovative, streamlined, and efficient management approaches within the heliophysics and astrophysics science areas. NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate supported the SEXTANT component of the mission, demonstrating pulsar-based spacecraft navigation.

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.