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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

47 Tucanae in X-Rays


47 Tucanae: A globular cluster located about 15,000 light years from Earth.

New results from Chandra and other X-ray telescopes have provided one of the most reliable determinations yet of the relation between the radius of a neutron star and its mass. Neutron stars, the ultra-dense cores left behind after massive stars collapse, contain the densest matter known in the Universe outside of a black hole. This image contains data from a long Chandra observation of 47Tucanae, a globular cluster where one of the eight neutron stars in the study is found. Lower-energy X-rays are red, those with intermediate energies are green, and the highest-energy X-rays are shown in blue.

Scale: Image is 2.3 arcmin across. (about 10 light years)

Image credit: NASA/CXC/Michigan State/A.Steiner et al

Note: For more information, see 47 Tucanae: Probing Extreme Matter Through Observations of Neutron Stars.

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