We live in interesting times. Today — and just about any day you can imagine — you can type find new views of things in the cosmos simply by doing searches on the World Wide Web. One of my favorite sites these days is the Chandra X-ray Observatory web site. Chandra looks at things with x-ray eyes — seeing well beyond where our own eyes leave off. Objects emitting x-ray signals are among the hottest and busiest in the cosmos. What kind of places is Chandra seeing? The image above shows four views of the center of a nearby galaxy called Centaurus A. Astronomers have long known that this galaxy’s central region was noisy in radio wavelengths — but when they turned other “eyes” toward it, this is what they found. Centaurus A is the site of an ancient and incredibly destructive event called a galaxy merger. It began 100 million years ago when two galaxies began a death dance together. Their collision shattered both galaxies, spurred the births of clouds of blue-white stars, and warped the dust lane of one galaxy into a twisted pancake shape. There is almost certainly a supermassive black hole at the center of Centaurus A giving out tremendous bursts of x-ray and radio emissions. This object, like so many other fascinating places in the universe, is piquing astronomers’ curiosity as they seek to understand just what happened here and what will occur here in the future.

For more cool x-ray images of the sky, check the Chandra web site every few days to see what else this unique observatory is seeing!