Prime Focus May 2001

PHOTO CAPTION >

Some 320 years after flaring into a massive supernova, Cassiopeia A (Cas A) reveals a bright x-ray object near the center of its remnant gas. This first-light Chandra X-ray Observatory image may reveal a neutron star or energy surrounding a black hole. On the TVS website, the color version of this shot reveals the lowest intensity as red, medium as green, and high-energy regions as blue. Specific areas are also enriched in iron, silicon, and sulfur. (NASA: CXC/Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer/Rutgers, J. Hughes)

TVS Presents


May TVS
Highlights


  • 2 Club News and Notes

  • 3 What's Up in May

  • 4 What's Up in June

  • 5 Star parties shine bright

  • 6 AANC conference scrapbook

  • 7 Help Wanted: TVS Editor

  • 8 Membership application

      As editor of Mercury magazine, the acclaimed publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Robert Naeye views hundreds of astronomical images every month. Among his
favorites are those captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. In fact, he likes them so much that he has assembled a presentation of the best of these images for a variety of objects.

   Chandra maintains an unusual high-Earth orbit. The elliptical shape swings the observatory almost a third of the way to the Moon, before it swings back to Earth at a distance of just 10,000 km/ 6,200 miles. Each orbit is complete in 64 hours and 18 minutes, providing up to 55 hours of uninterrupted observation. The observatory carries an x-ray telescope designed to scan supernova remnants and pulsars. Onboard instrumentation processes these images and relays them to NASA for analysis. Chandra's showplace instrument, the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer, boasts a pixel resolution 50 times better than the Rosat Observatory. Join us on May 11 to see Robert's collection of these spectacular images. As always, visitors are welcome.

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