I was right sizing is the only one I've
ever seen it was at twelve thirty in the
morning still dark and my daughter who
is old it was awake and knew what was
going on my son was actually asleep and
we woke him up just to see the lowest
ignition and liftoff of Columbia
reaching new heights for women x-ray
astronomy when I stood there 3 plus
miles away at the viewing stand and the
shuttle engines it off and you can hear
the roar and my shirt was vibrating most
of the people come down to watch the
launch that was it we launched
everything was great for us of course
was a very very big step because now
Chandler was off into space but until we
saw x rays coming through and knew that
everything worked we couldn't really be
too overconfident or relaxed or assured
of success and red going off product way
to work
I felt ecstatic I felt unbelievably
ecstatic and when we saw those first x
rays at the minute the first time the
door opened and I could see that they
were being focused more or less into the
right size area i just broke into the
biggest smile you've ever seen
we looked at cassiopi a supernova
remnant of a star that exploded about
300 years ago
it's the neutron star the core of the
star that exploded collapses and forms a
neutron star and we made that discovery
and this official first light image as
well we're very excited that was an
extraordinary time I think when I first
realized the telescope was working i had
a real sense of relief real sense of
elation because of all the hard work
that is going on i was incredibly proud
because of the team and being part of
that team so is the requirement was it
she had to work for three years and the
goal was five
we're 15 years into our five-year
lifetime that's not too bad
so many people have contributed much of
their careers to the success of the
chatter mission and we're just to
continue to to reap the benefits of
those sacrifices that they made and
excellent size return that we're seeing
from the mission and we hope those
continue for years to come you want to
find black holes you want to use an
x-ray telescope from various
astronomical observatories and spacing
on the ground and in particular chandra
being a major player we've determined
that most galaxies that are as massive
as our Milky Way or more help us what we
call a supermassive black hole in the
center of the galaxy supermassive means
that they they weigh in at anywhere from
a million to 10 billion times
the mass of our own son what we're
turning to find is that cluster of
galaxies has a bright central galaxy in
the middle it's often an active galaxies
and quasars are so a supermassive black
hole in the middle of a big galaxy
because when the cluster is forming a
lot of material tends to fall to the
middle so you get the biggest galaxy in
the middle you have cool material
falling in forming stars eventually some
of that gets to the black hole the black
hole can't take it all in
so some of its blown out radio Jets that
heats up the material is coming back
down so they can feedback loop between
the growing a black hole in the middle
and B star formation is happening in the
question
we've known about the existence of dark
matter for a long time it used to be
called missing matter but now it's just
dark matter because we know it's there
and we know this in a number of
different ways so Chandra is discovery
of some things like the bullet cluster
is not a great surprise but this is a
situation one of these train wrecks that
you can see and you can see that these
galaxies collided with each other and
what's happened is very interesting and
chose the presence of dark matter in a
beautiful way what we've now seen is
that when there is two clusters which
pass through each other and the gas got
stripped out and the Dark Matter kept
going and so they've actually been that
enabled us in really the only
opportunity in the universe that that
means i'm aware of to clearly separate
the existence of the dark matter which
then you can detect by gravity thing
called gravitational lensing effect and
and
the gas and so these are this is like a
you know a key scientific discovery to
understand the nature of dark matter
versus normal matter in the universe and
that's a very beautiful image for me
it's it it's beautiful because it
combines together data from Chandra
hubble space telescope as well as the
Magellan telescope very powerful
ground-based telescope and it really for
me shows how chandra science can be
powerful in in the mountain
multi-wavelength space important and
discoveries in astronomy and
astrophysics was the discovery of dark
energy and that is that the universe is
accelerating apart what people are
trying to do using various different
techniques and again in all the
different wavelength bands to measure
the parameters to characterize the dark
energy Chandra x-ray astronomy is
playing an important role in these
measurements while the universe evolves
differently it's not the universe
wherein without it I think that's most
important
and secondly if we're ever going to try
to understand cosmology that is the
growth and evolution of the universe's
these are important constraints boundary
conditions and have to be satisfied by
any model that you may have
I i usually make mistakes saying dark
energy didn't exist at the time that we
design chandra one of course existed we
didn't know of the existence of
documentation or when we design chandra
you see the power of an observatory and
it was a observatory like chandler with
a with a state-of-the-art telescope and
these imaging spectroscopically
capabilities of its science instruments
can do things that maybe weren't even
things that you plan on doing because
you didn't know about them at the time
and a lot of the science channel falls
in that category
the universe is a big big place yeah i
think in this mature phase what we can
do which would have been harder to do in
the early years when you want to look at
a lot of different things and satisfy a
lot of service is taking really longer
exposures charter has very sharp vision
but if you don't look for very long you
don't capture very many photons and so
you can't really populate that digital
image with much detail so but if we
stare one region for a really long time
gather so many photons that we can
really understand the subtleties we can
see thousands of stars we can understand
how they change with time we can look at
the the folds ooh of Denison's in star
forming regions are in the middle of a
two million second observation with
chandra of something called 30 Doradus
the tarantula nebula we've only got a
million seconds so far we see hundreds
of stars that some of them are are very
unusual and look like they're
interacting binaries we see strange
diffuse shock admission that we don't
even understand yet another thing we can
do with Chandra is to look wider so we
can start mapping regions that are
degrees across on the sky very complex
fields we've done this once already with
something called a great nebula in
karina we meant the Carina star-forming
complex from that we found over 14,000
young stars and we find a distributed
population of young stars as well as as
these dense clusters we also see an
amazing array of diffuse x-ray emission
if we look at them in the optical what
we see is a lot of galaxies like pretty
if we look at the x-rays we see the hot
gas which is actually much more of the
material in the cluster that 10 times
more
then the material it's in the galaxy's
and that surrounds all those gases so
many people that have important to this
success continued success of Chandra
obviously at the head of the list goes
riccardo giacconi he conceived of this
need for this Observatory nine months
after he discovered the first x-ray
source copious x1 that was in he
discovered that in 1962 so that was in
1963 you have to mention Leon been
spayed rock the Chandra telescope
scientists whose brilliance and
understanding of x-ray optics was such
an important factor in being able to
build this telescope and coming up with
techniques how to do it that weren't
going to break the bank and yet solve
the problems that we encountered when we
started chandra we did not know how to
build it we knew the science we wanted
to do this was a purely science-driven
program Chandra x-ray Center has a very
strong team that that works very well as
a team biggest amount of credit the
building that team goes to recently
retired director I'll be Tannenbaum who
was really maybe the mother of Chandra
all the way along shepherded through the
original process to get it approved at
cetera and built the x-ray scented team
so it was incredibly well built with it
was designed with the very robust
reliable parts that the science
instruments were were basically knew
when the telescope was certainly
state-of-the-art we tested the heck out
of things in the lab before delivering
we tested at the at
Marshall during the calibration there
was testing during full of integration
there were some problems there were some
issues we fixed everything we could find
I think we had again from the team
perspective we had great leadership that
at marshall and throughout all of the
contractors and the science team
involved so by all of these metrics
Chandra is one of the most productive
missions that they have been
scientifically and we're working
extremely hard to maintain those levels
and looking at all the components in
detail the condition now that most of
their condition at launch vs projections
as to how long we can last up there and
there would have been no showstoppers
came up in that study and all the things
that the engineering team could be doing
to mitigate aging are already being done
flight ops team and the science ops team
they continue to work together to really
perform maximum maximize our sides while
maintaining and protecting the health
and safety of the vehicle we do have an
extraordinary team and they've worked
together since the beginning of the
mission and writer development before
that includes the ground control team
the science science center flight
operations team the science instrument
teams the factory support from Northrop
Grumman and our colleagues at Marshall
Space Flight Center the quality of the
science with Chandler I think the legacy
will be that it was really a serious
science it was in there toe-to-toe well
with all the other branches of astronomy
and astrophysics pushing the envelope
everything we look at is high drama in
space and it's a lot of fun
well I think changes legacy will be
profound
huge archive of Chandra observations
continues to be used and new things come
out of that the cleverness of the
scientific community can't be underrated
peoplesmart and they have ideas and they
run the range from studying the
interaction of exoplanets with their
nearby stars and that influence on the
planets themselves an interesting topic
of its own to watch is out there in the
deep fields we're going to increase the
amount of observing time and I
anticipate that depending on the outcome
of that we may go even deeper
you never know what you're going to see
if you haven't seen it before I mean the
same thing that I said before launch
I said I can tell you about 25 things
that this Observatory is going to do
that are absolutely fantastic science
and they will be dwarfed by the 25
things that I couldn't tell you about
because if I could tell them about you
about them in my name would be required
to Coney or somebody like him and I
would be acidic somewhere else with my
Nobel price that I think it's improving
confidence that Chandler will continued
to make outstanding discoveries because
it's so unique
Andrew
no TV coverage of the food and that man
got the black up now and you're gonna be
the one getting a TV picture never-fail
yes we are getting a TV picture now
one all
what