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millisecond pulsar visualizaiton

RXTE’s Greatest Pulsar Hits

A pulsar is the crushed core of an exploded star, a rapidly spinning cinder that repeatedly swings a beam of light in our direction. Check out the post “Lighthouses in Space” for more about what pulsars are, how they work and why we study them. On the eve of the … Continue Reading →

Rossi X-ray Timing (and cake) Explorer

  • By Maggie Masetti
  • January 26, 2015
  • Comments Off on Rossi X-ray Timing (and cake) Explorer

We just passed the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer’s 20th birthday last month – a little tricky since the satellite is no longer in service. But why not take a quick look back and its awesome history, which we did in this blog on its 15th anniversary. In the grand (and … Continue Reading →

Can You Hear a Black Hole?

Recently I came across this story – this ten year old story – on Tumblr. Sept. 9, 2003: Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have found, for the first time, sound waves from a supermassive black hole. The “note” is the deepest ever detected from any object in our Universe. … Continue Reading →

Try It At Home: The RXTE Learning Center

  • By Maggie Masetti
  • January 6, 2012
  • Comments Off on Try It At Home: The RXTE Learning Center

Happy 16th birthday to the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer! Though this mission is soon coming to a close, it’s had an incredible lifespan and so much great science has come out of it. RXTE has a Learning Center, which recently received a facelift. It has a terrific intro to X-ray … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 3/28/11

The center of our galaxy glows in this infrared image taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. This data was originally part of a more complete view of the plane of the Milky Way, but then was given different contrast to better highlight the features of this region around the galactic … Continue Reading →

Build your own satellite (paper model)!

Try It At Home: Build your own satellite (paper model)!

One of the things we do a lot of at NASA Goddard is build satellites. Many, many missions have come through here to be either constructed, or tested, or both! But did you know that you can build your own versions of many of these missions? Ok, maybe they won’t … Continue Reading →

Happy 15th Anniversary to RXTE!

Today is the 15th anniversary of the launch of the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE)! With its future in jeopardy, we thought we’d like to celebrate its long and useful life. Did you know that over its productive lifetime, there have been more than 2000 RXTE-related articles in scientific journals … Continue Reading →

RXTE, Black holes, and Pulsars - Oh My!

RXTE, Black holes, and Pulsars – Oh My!

Black holes and pulsars are two of the most mysterious (and coolest-sounding) cosmic objects – and we study both of them here at the Astrophysics Science Division. Here is Blueshift’s inside look at two recent discoveries made using data from the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (which I personally like to … Continue Reading →

Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 7/5/10

Soccer City Stadium, Johannesburg, South Africa (uploaded by NASA Goddard Photo and Video) Cue the vuvuzelas – NASA Goes to the World Cup! See the games from a new perspective with a slideshow of images from Earth-observing satellites of the event sites and participating countries.

Podcast: X-ray Vision

Podcast: X-ray Vision

Click to listen! (17MB MP3, right-click to save) Transcript (Text, PDF) Welcome to the June 2007 episode of Blueshift, from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. We’re featuring X-ray astronomy this episode – listening to black holes and learning about what it takes to build an X-ray telescope. We interviewed Jerry Bonnell, co-curator … Continue Reading →

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