Nasa reveals stunning ‘cosmic razzle-dazzle’ in 9 new images from space

Nasa has released a new collection of Chandra X-ray Observatory’s images they describe as a ‘cosmic razzle-dazzle.’ The new compilation of images features data from Nasa’s flagship X-ray telescope, along with a host of other telescopes including Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope and more. So, what do the images show? (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO)

N79

N79 shows a giant region of star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a small satellite neighbor galaxy to the Milky Way. The purple areas of the image shows what Chandra sees, in X-ray waves, which in this picture reveals the hot gas created by young stars. Learning information about young stars helps astronomers better understand how stars like our Sun formed billions of years ago. The blue, grey and gold colouring shows infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO et al.)

NGC 2146

Although named quite boringly, this spectacular image shows a spiral galaxy with dusty arms that are blocking the view of the galaxy centre from the Earth’s perspective. Chandra's X-rays show a double star system and hot gas driven away from the galaxy by supernova explosions and winds from giant stars (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO et al.)

IC 348

Forming close in our galaxy – the Milky Way – the wispy looking structures, coloured in purple, show interstellar material that’s reflecting light from the cluster’s stars. The point-like sources in Chandra’s X-ray data are young stars in the cluster developing there (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO et al.)

M83

Another spiral galaxy, but this time facing Earth, shows a view of the entire galaxy that is often impossible. Chandra’s X-ray vision comes up in images of red, green and blue. And through its vision, it has detected the explosions of stars, or supernovas, and their aftermath across M83 (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO et al.)

M82

Known also as a starburst galaxy, M82 is a place where stars are forming at rates tens to hundreds of times higher than normal galaxies. The telescope sees supernovas which produce expanding bubbles of multimillion-degree gas that extend for millions of light-years away from the galaxy's disk (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO et al.)

NGC 1068

A million mile per hour wind is howling here, being driven by the spiral galaxy’s black hole which is lit up at the centre of the galaxy in X-rays. NGC 1068 is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy containing a black hole at its center that is twice as massive as the Milky Way’s. Additional data show in yellow, grey and gold come from the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Telescope (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO et al.)

NGC 346

This young cluster of stars is home to thousands of newborn stars, and the cluster's most massive stars send powerful winds and produce intense radiation. Chandra helped to reveal the output from massive stars in the cluster and diffuse emission from a supernova remnant, the glowing debris of an exploded star. Chandra’s vision is shown in purple, with optical and ultraviolet from Hubble is shown in blue, brown and gold (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO et al.)

IC 1623

This image shows two galaxies in the process of merging, and as they collide, they trigger new bursts of star formation that glow dramatically in certain kinds of light. They could also be in the process of forming a supermassive black hole. Chandra’s vision is shown in purple, with Webb infrared data shown in red, gold and grey (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO et al.)

Westerlund 1

Known as the biggest and closest ‘super’ star cluster to Earth, Chandra, and other telescopes, are helping astronomers delve deeper into this galactic factory where stars are being produced. Observations from Chandra have revealed thousands of individual stars pumping out X-ray emission into the cluster. Chandra’s X-rays are shown in pink, blue, purple and orange with Webb being shown in yellow, gold and blue (Picture: NASA/CXC/SAO et al.)