The Week in Space

Triple-Teaming a Black Hole  Black holes may be incredibly powerful, but even they yield their secrets when faced with superior fire power. Three cutting-edge telescopes teamed up to produce this spectacular image of Centaurus A, a galaxy about 13 million light-years away that harbors a supermassive black hole at its core. The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment submillimeter telescope shows jets and lobes powered by the black hole as orange. The space-based Chandra Observatory’s X-ray data is in blue.  Visible light data from the Max-Planck/ESO 2.2-meter telescope shows the dust lane in the galaxy and background stars. The X-ray jet in the upper left extends for about 13,000 light-years away from the black hole. Material in the jet is traveling at about half the speed of light.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / CfA / R.Kraft et al.; Submillimeter: MPIfR / ESO / APEX / A.Weiss et al.; Optical: ESO / WFI

Weekly Calendar

March 29 - April 4, 2010

Holidays - Sky Events - Space History

Monday 29

Full Moon 10:25 PM
Saturn 8° north of Moon

1807: Heinrich Olbers discovers Vesta
1974: Mariner 10 first Mercury flyby
1989: Starfire 1 launched
2006: ISS Expedition 13 crew launched

Tuesday 30

Wednesday 31

1962: NASA approves final design of Gemini spacecraft
1982: Kvant module launched to Mir space station
1997: Pioneer 10 mission officially ends

Thursday 1

1960: TIROS 1 launched
1997: Comet Hale-Bopp’s closest approach to Sun
1998: TRACE launched

Friday 2

Good Friday

Saturday 3

Sunday 4

Easter

1930: American Rocket Society founded
1968: Apollo 6 launched
1983: STS-6 Challenger launched
1997: STS-83 Columbia launched
2000: First commercial mission to Mir 

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