Description: This image combines data from four different wavelengths of light: infrared (red), visible (green), ultraviolet (blue), and X-ray(purple). The unusual shape of the Cartwheel Galaxy is likely due to a collision with one of the smaller galaxies on the lower left several hundred million years ago. The smaller galaxy produced compression waves in the gas of the Cartwheel as it plunged through it. These compression waves trigger bursts of star formation. The most recent star burst has lit up the Cartwheel's rim, which has a diameter larger than that of the Milky Way Galaxy, with millions of bright young stars. The bright, white X-ray sources on the rim (see inset) are due to matter falling into black holes left behind by the explosion of massive stars.

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: 2006

Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/cartwheel/

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Gift line: Composite: NASA/JPL/Caltech/P.Ap