Beatrice Vaia (Credit: Beatrice Vaia)

We welcome Beatrice Vaia as a guest blogger. Beatrice is the first author of a paper that is the subject of our latest press release. She is a postdoc at INAF–IASF Milano and earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Physics from Roma Tre University before completing her PhD in the National PhD Programme in Space Science and Technology at the Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS Pavia and the University of Trento.

Unlike external galaxies, which we can photograph from the outside, we must reconstruct the Milky Way's structure from our vantage point within its disk.

The European Space Agency's Gaia mission, launched in 2013, has transformed this effort by measuring the distances and brightnesses of more than a billion stars. By comparing the brightness and colors of stars at different distances, astronomers can map the distribution of interstellar dust across much of the Milky Way, since dust both dims and reddens starlight.

However, Gaia has difficulty probing the Galaxy's most distant spiral arms because their stars are either too faint to detect or obscured by thick clouds of dust.

To explore those remote parts of the Milky Way, astronomers have traditionally relied on radio observations of neutral hydrogen (H I) and carbon monoxide (CO), which trace the gas and molecular clouds concentrated along the spiral arms. The observed velocities of these clouds can be converted into distances using a model for how the Milky Way rotates. While this technique has revealed much of the Galaxy's large-scale structure, the inferred distances depend on astronomers’ incomplete understanding of how quickly the galaxy is rotating, leaving the exact locations of the outer spiral arms still uncertain.

For over a decade, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has been releasing three-dimensional models (3D) that transform astronomical data into interactive experiences. These science-based visualizations offered new ways to explore stellar evolution, supernova remnants, and the complex structures revealed through X-ray observations.

Now, three of those models are taking the next step.

Beginning in late June, the 3D models of the Cygnus Loop, BP Tau and G292.0+1.8 will be available on the Smithsonian Institution's Voyager platform, providing a rich, immersive way to investigate these remarkable cosmic objects.

250th Red, White, & Blue Collection
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Credit: Cassiopeia A: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand; NGC 3603: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; IR/UV: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/AURA; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand; NGC 4736: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical:Brian Brennan and Remi Lacasse; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand; ZwCl 0024+1652: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical and Dark Matter: NASA/ESA/M.J. Jee; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare

In celebration of the 250th birthday of the United States, NASA has unveiled four cosmic images from its Chandra X-ray Observatory rendered in red, white, and blue that represent the wonders of the universe the agency explores. The images are accompanied by a trio of new sonifications — a technique that translates astronomical data into sounds

 
M87 Jet
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. Laval/C. Poitras et al.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Jubett, K. Arcand, and L. Frattare

Astronomers have produced the most detailed X-ray views ever obtained of the jet launched from the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier (M87), as reported in a press release from Laval University in Canada. The main video from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) showing X-ray images taken in 2012, 2017, 2023 and 2025. Using advanced image-processing techniques, researchers have tracked the evolution of the jet structures in remarkable detail.

Messier 87 is located about 55 million light-years from Earth and has one of the largest known black holes — weighing some 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun — in its core. This black hole was the first ever to have a direct image taken of it, by the Event Horizon Telescope and released in 2019. Prior to that, M87 was already very well known among astronomers for many reasons — including the spectacular jet that blasts away from the black hole.

 
M83
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/AURA/STScI, Hubble Heritage Team, W. Blair (STScI/Johns Hopkins University) and R. O'Connell (University of Virginia); Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Jubett, L. Frattare and P. Edmonds

This graphic shows two of the X-ray sources in a nearby galaxy that are changing their brightness in surprising ways as described in our latest press release. By analyzing data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory that span over 14 years, researchers found over 20 previously identified supernova remnants — remains from stars that exploded — that vary unexpectedly in X-ray brightness in Messier 83 (M83). These represent roughly half of the X-ray sources associated with supernova remnants in their sample in M83.

The panel on the left contains a composite image of M83 with X-rays from Chandra (red, green, and blue) and optical light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). The two varying Chandra sources are circled in the composite image and close-up timelapse images of these sources are shown in the panels on the right.

Sagittarius A*
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Northwestern Univ./M. Gorski; Radio:ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ALMA;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Astronomers have found that the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A*(Sgr A*), is blowing a hot cosmic wind — something scientists have been hunting for over 50 years.

Sagittarius C
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UCLA/Z. Zhu et al.; ESA/XMM-Newton; Optical: PanSTARRS; Radio: MeerKAT;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and P. Edmonds

Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers may have found a supernova remnant in an intriguing neighborhood in the middle of our galaxy. A paper describing these new findings published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Supernova remnants are the expanding remains of exploded stars and provide elements — like iron, oxygen, and silicon — that are critical for the formation of planets and for life as we know it to form and flourish.

This new supernova remnant, if confirmed, would be one of the closest ever discovered to the supermassive black hole at the central region of the Milky Way galaxy, an exotic region crammed with massive stars, long threads of magnetic fields and dense clouds of gas orbiting rapidly around the Galactic Center.

Abell 2029
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/C. Watson et al.; Optical: PanSTARRS;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk and P. Edmonds

The galaxy cluster Abell 2029 is sometimes described as “the most relaxed cluster in the Universe.” This moniker does not arise from some sort of mellow vibe, but rather because of how calm and undisturbed the superheated gas that pervades the cluster appears to be.

New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory clearly show that Abell 2029 had a much more colorful history than its current disposition suggests. The latest study finds that Abell 2029 is still settling down after a raucous collision with another smaller cluster about four billion years ago.

X-ray Dot 3DHST-AEGIS-12014
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Max Plank Inst./R. Hviding et al.; Optical/IR; NASA/ESA/STScI/HST;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

This image of a special object, dubbed the “X-ray dot,” represents a discovery from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory that could help explain the nature of a mysterious class of sources in the early Universe as described in our latest press release. Officially known as 3DHST-AEGIS-12014, the X-ray dot is located about 11.8 billion light-years from Earth and may provide a crucial bridge between young black holes embedded in dense gas and typical growing supermassive black holes.

Trumpler 3 and NGC 2353
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ/K. Getman; Optical/IR: PanSTARRS;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

These images of star clusters represent a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory that shows how young Sun-like stars are dimmer in X-rays than previously thought. As described in our latest press release, this result has implications for the prospects of life developing and surviving on planets in orbit around these stars.

Trumpler 3 and NGC 2353 are so-called open clusters that contains hundreds of young stars. These stars are tied to each other through gravity, having been formed from the same clouds of gas. Many of these stars have masses that are similar to our Sun, but are much younger. In these new composite images of Trumpler 3 and NGC 2353, X-rays from Chandra (purple) have been combined with an optical image from the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii (red, green, and blue). Another star clusters from the new Chandra study, NGC 2301 is shown in the same color schemes with the X-ray and optical data.