Chandra's Cosmos · Dark Matter, Black Holes, and Other Wonders Revealed by NASA's Premier X-Ray Observatory

On July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the most powerful X-ray telescope ever built, was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Since then, Chandra has given us a view of the universe that is largely hidden from telescopes sensitive only to visible light. It is a universe of violent and extreme environments, such as black holes, supernova shock waves, and titanic collisions between clusters of galaxies. In Chandra’s Cosmos, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra science spokesperson Wallace H. Tucker uses a series of short, connected stories to describe the exploration of the hot, high-energy face of the universe with Chandra.

Chandra has imaged the spectacular, glowing remains of exploded stars, and taken spectra showing the dispersal of elements. Chandra has observed the region around the supermassive black hole in the center of our Milky Way and traced the separation of dark matter from normal matter in the collision of galaxies, contributing to both dark matter and dark energy studies. Tucker explores all of these observations and explains their implications with an entertaining style that will engage anyone interested in space and astronomy.