5 NASA images to celebrate Chandra’s 25th anniversary: From Bat Shadow to Galactic Centre

NASA images: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) keeps sharing amazing images from space on social media platforms. Most of the high-definition images have been formed from the data provided by high-definition cameras and telescopes sent in space. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory telescope captures X-ray emission from very hot regions of the Universe like exploded stars, clusters of galaxies, and matter around black holes.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory

The satellite carrying Chandra X-ray telescope orbits above Earth, up to an altitude of 139,000 km (86,500 mi) in space, to capture the X-rays absorbed by Earth.

The data from the satellite is primarily collected by the Smithsonian's Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA. The centre processes the data, and distributes it to scientists around the world for analysis.

Top 5 NASA images from Chandra X-ray Observatory

The image is a composition of two different scenes captured from Chandra X-ray and Hubble telescope. The composite image consists of several pink and white stars gleam through murky cloud formations.

The shadow formed by young star appears similar to a Batman call sign projected in the sky. Hence, it is known as ‘The Bat Shadow’.

The composite image captures the sight of Milky Way galaxy with bright spots depicted at the centre with translucent swirls. The clouds show hot gas seen with Chandra.

The star-forming region contains the Pillars of Creation. This region's image was captured for the first time by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

This image, formed by the inputs from Chandra X-ray telescope, shows X-rays detected from young stars in the region in red and blue colour.

Hot gas detected by Chandra is being pulled away from this elliptical galaxy as it moves through a galaxy cluster at about three million miles per hour.

WR 124 is a rare type of Wolf-Rayet star, a bright, massive star experiencing a short-lived phase in its evolution. The purple spots visible on the image are X-rays from Chandra, whereas the blue light is the infrared from Herschel, Spitzer, WISE, and the red, green and blue lights are from Webb telescope.