Description: Chandra's image of this highly luminous quasar shows an enormous X-ray jet that extends at least a million light years. The jet is likely due to the collision of a beam of high-energy electrons with microwave photons. The high-energy beam is thought to have been produced by explosive activity related to gas swirling around a supermassive black hole. The length of the jet and the observed bright knots of X-ray emission suggest that the explosive activity is long-lived but intermittent. The X-ray light from PKS 1127-145 passes through a galaxy 4 billion light years away, on its way to Earth. This allowed astronomers to estimate that the gas in the intervening galaxy contained a much lower concentration of oxygen relative to hydrogen gas than does our galaxy - about 5 times lower.

Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray

Date: 2002

Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/1127/

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Gift line: NASA/A.Siemiginowska (CfA)/J.Bec