If you actually had the ability to see X-Rays, the world around you would look pretty boring. Actually it would be invisible, since nothing around you gives off X-rays. You might be able to see an imaging device if you live or work near a medical office, but that’s about it. If you looked at the night sky, you would see many interesting sources of X-Ray light, mostly from active black holes in our own galaxy and beyond. Recently a high-resolution scan of the Andromeda Galaxy revealed a plethora of sources, showing where black holes and neutron stars are feeding...
The Sun, stars, nebulae, galaxies, planets; We can see them all from our lonely cosmic address, but not all is revealed in the light our eyes see. We need to look at the entire electromagnetic spectrum to understand the range of objects we see in the universe. Our closest star shows us how different it can look when you change the observed wavelength. In high energy ultraviolet and X-ray light we can see the most powerful sunspots emitting their bursts of radiation and the swirls of solar plasma releasing ultraviolet energy in all directions. We still have a few years...
Lurking in the depths of a galaxy, hidden from human eyes, lie millions of monsters. They could swallow you up in an instant, sealing you off from the outside world and devouring you atom by atom. This sounds like your typical Hollywood monster movie, but with millions of black holes hidden throughout the galaxy, its more real than you might think. Supermassive black holes, the largest ones that reside at the centers of galaxies, are much easier to see. They are devouring gas and dust rapidly, resulting in bright emission across the electromagnetic spectrum, especially in x-rays. For many galaxies,...
