Galactic portrait yet again :)

Galaxy Gallery. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO

 Nature never disappoints. This time, galaxies seen via X-Ray. :)

Galaxies are like cosmic gems, each with characteristics including size and shape that make them distinct. A new gallery released today from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes displays a collection of galactic images that showcase this variety.

Astronomers put galaxies into three main categories: spirals like our own Milky Way, with arms emanating from their cores; ellipticals that are older and likely the result of mergers; and irregulars that can encompass a wide range of galactic phenomena.

Just as gems reveal the history of Earth through how they were forged over billions of years, these galactic gems are a way to study Earth's place in our home galaxy, the Milky Way. By looking outward to other galaxies, we learn more about our own—including clues to its past and future.

There are 16 new images in this galactic gallery. Each one contains X-ray data from Chandra that has been collected across Chandra's decades in space. This high-energy data has been combined with data from telescopes such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope, IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer), Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array), and others both on the ground and in space.

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/chandra/