Images
X-ray Images
Chandra Mission
X-ray Astronomy
Chandra People
Podcasts
Chandra in HD
Standard Definition
The Invisible Sky
Two Inch Universe
By Date/Category
Other Features
Animations & Video
Special Features
Audio
Inspirations
3D Files and Resources
Resources
Q & A
Glossary
Acronym Guide
Further Reading
Desktop Images
iPhone Wallpapers
By Date/Category
Miscellaneous
Handouts
Image Handouts
Chandra Lithographs
Chandra Infographics
Educational Activities
Printable Games
Chandra Fact Sheets
Presentations
Entire Collection
By Date
By Category
Presentations
Web Shortcuts
Chandra Blog
RSS Feed
Chronicle
Email Newsletter
News & Noteworthy
Image Use Policy
Questions & Answers
Glossary of Terms
Download Guide
Get Adobe Reader
Image Use
Image Use Policy & Request Form
Guidelines for utilizing images, applets, movies, and animations featured in this Web Site.
Print Instructions
Downloading Tips
Chandra Animated Gifs & Other Shareables

** NOTE ON ALL ANIMATED GIFS PROVIDED BELOW: Please be aware that flashing areas larger than 21,824 square pixels can trigger seizures in people with photosensitive seizure disorders like photosensitive epilepsy.**

Click for large jpg

1. Crab Nebula Timelapse (2002)
The dynamic rings, wisps and jets around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula as observed in X-ray light by Chandra.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

2. Tycho's Supernova Remnant
A supernova remnant located about 10,000 light years from Earth.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

3. Pictor A
A giant jet spanning continuously for over 300,000 light years is seen blasting out of the galaxy Pictor A.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

4. Vela Pulsar Jet
Much like an untended firehose, the jet bends and whips about spectacularly at half the speed of light. Bright blobs move in the jet at similar speeds.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

5. Time-lapse of Cassiopeia A
This velocity is explained by a special type of energy loss by the blast wave.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg
2010-2011
Click for large jpg
2000-2001 Close-up
Click for large jpg
2000-2001 Full field

6. Time-lapse of Crab Nebula
The dynamic rings, wisps and jets around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula as observed in X-ray light by Chandra.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

7. Cassiopeia A: Chandra 3-color X-ray
This 3-color version of the Chandra First Light data displays a wealth of detail and drama.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

8. G299.2-2.9
This debris field, which glows brightly in X-rays, was left over when a star exploded about 4,500 years ago.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

9. M51
This galaxy, nicknamed the "Whirlpool," is a spiral galaxy, like our Milky Way, located about 30 million light years from Earth.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

10. Crab Nebula
These images of the Crab Nebula show how extremely dense, rapidly rotating neutron stars produced when a massive star explodes can create clouds of high-energy particles light years across that glow brightly in X-rays.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

11. Hercules A
Some galaxies have extremely bright cores, suggesting that they contain a supermassive black hole that is pulling in matter at a prodigious rate. Astronomers call these "active galaxies," and Hercules A is one of them.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg
With Text
Click for large jpg
Without Text
12. Black Holes
Black Holes (def.): A dense, compact object whose gravitational pull is so strong that - within a certain distance of it - nothing can escape, not even light.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg
With Text
Click for large jpg
Without Text
13. Supernovas
Supernova (def.): Explosive death of a star, caused by the sudden onset of nuclear burning in a white dwarf star, or gravitational collapse of the core of massive star followed by a shock wave that disrupts the star.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

14. Cas A: Supernova Remnant in 3D
This visualization of Cassiopeia A shows that there are two main components to this supernova remnant: a spherical component in the outer parts of the remnant and a flattened (disk-like) component in the inner region.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

15. SN 2006gy: An Exploding Star
The extremely massive star shed some of its outer layers in a large eruption prior to its violent collapse. The explosion then plows into the expelled cooler gas, creating a brilliant light show.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

16. Black Hole Merger
This gif shows a merger of two galaxies that forms a single galaxy with two centrally located supermassive black holes surrounded by disks of hot gas. The black holes orbit each other for hundreds of millions of years before they merge to form a single supermassive black hole that sends out intense gravitational waves.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg
Click for large jpg
Click for large jpg
480
Click for large jpg
640
17. Chandra Spacecraft
On July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Chandra is one of NASA's four "Great Observatories," along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Jubett)

Click for large jpg

18. Astronomy fact #1
There is a supermassive black hole in the center of our very own Milky Way Galaxy. It is called Sagittarius A* and it is 26,000 light years away from Earth.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

19. Astronomy fact #2
If a baseball were made of neutron star material it would weigh about 20 trillion kg, or about 40 times the estimated weight of the entire human population.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

20. Astronomy fact #3
Depending on its size, when a star dies it can explode in a supernova which may temporarily outshine everything else in the galaxy it resides.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

21. Astronomy fact #4
A quasar radiates so much energy that if it was only the size of a flashlight it would produce as much light as all the houses and businesses in the entire Los Angeles basin!
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

22. Astronomy fact #5
Planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets! They are dying stars that looked like planets when viewed through the small telescope of the past.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

23. Astronomy fact #6
In the future our Sun will become a white dwarf and be one/millionth its current size!
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

24. Astronomy fact #7
Brown dwarfs weren't discovered until 1995 because they were so faint, but it is now estimated that in the Milky Way there are just as many as normal stars.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

25. Astronomy fact #8
More than one thousand Earths can fit inside Jupiter. Impressive until you realize more than one MILLION Earths could fit inside the Sun.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

26. Astronomy fact #9
It is thought that the galaxy cluster Perseus is emanating sound waves in the note of B flat, 57 octaves below middle-C which is a million billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

27. Astronomy fact #10
In billions of years, when our Milky Way galaxy collides with the Andromeda galaxy, it is unlikely that any stars will collide because they are all so far apart from each other.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

28. Astronomy fact #11
The electrical power required to operate NASA's premier X-ray telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, is about the same power a hair dryer uses.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

29. Astronomy fact #12
If the Sun suddenly turned into a black hole of the same mass (which it won't), Earth would continue to orbit it without being pulled in.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

30. Astronomy fact #14
Starburst galaxies can form stars tens, even hundreds of times faster than normal galaxies.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

31. Astronomy fact #15
The first NASA mission commanded by a woman, Commander Eileen Collins, deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1999.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

32. Astronomy fact #16
Massive young stars sometimes destroy the dusty discs of smaller stars, preventing planets from forming.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

33. Astronomy fact #17
In our galaxy, supernovas occur about once every 50 years.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

34. Astronomy fact #18
It would take light 650 years to travel from one end of the Tarantula Nebula to the other.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

35. Astronomy fact #19
Brown dwarfs are a thousand times less luminous than our Sun.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

36. Astronomy fact #21
If a magnetar flew past Earth within 100,000 miles, its ultra-magnetic field would destroy the data on every credit card.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

37. Astronomy fact #22
Light travels so fast that it could circle the Earth 7.5 times in 1 second.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

38. Astronomy fact #23
It would take light about 8 million years to get across the galaxy cluster El Gordo.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

39. Astronomy fact #24
Dr. Belinda Wilkes is the first female Director of a NASA Great Observatory.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

40. Astronomy fact #25
What makes up 96% of our Universe is a mystery astronomers are trying to solve.
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

41. Astronomy fact #26
In 1572 through 1574, Tycho's Supernova was so bright that it was visible during the day!
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)

Click for large jpg

42. Astronomy fact #27
Supermassive black holes can have the mass of many millions of suns!
PDF
(Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO)