Based on this recently released snapshot of the
night sky captured by NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer
(NICER), we can safely assume Superman gets no sleep at night. Just look at
that thing.
The sparkling dots and tangled loops are the result
of nearly two years of effort to study cosmic sources of X-rays from Earth's
orbit.
As a piece of art, it's stunning. Check it out in
all its glory below, complete with details identifying the relevant spots, or
in high detail here on NASA's Goddard media page.
To fully appreciate its beauty, though, let's break
down what this golden fireworks display actually describes.
On board the International Space Station (ISS) sits
the workhorse of the NICER payload – a washing-machine sized cube called an
X-ray Timing Instrument.
Roughly every hour and a half, after the Sun sets on
the ISS orbit, the instrument scoops up high energy photons from up to eight
locations per orbit in the night sky.
Every curved line is the path traced as the
instrument's attention shifts from one source to the next. The smaller flecks
and lines are energetic particles crashing into the sensors.
But the bigger 'sparkles' are of particular
interest, their brightness the result of both the amount of time NICER spends
focussed on that spot and their generous outpouring of X-ray radiation.
Many of the locations are home to dead suns called
neutron stars; objects so dense, the only thing keeping them from collapsing
into a black hole is a law that says their nuclei can't all pile into the same
volume. Not without considerably more force, at least.
The problem is, we're still not entirely sure how
that works, as the exact sizes of neutron stars aren't clear.
Knowing their precise radius can tell us more about
the crazy physics going on inside their bodies. It's hoped this mission could
determine their size to within a precision of just 5 percent.
Some of those neutron stars are quick spinners
called pulsars. Nailing down the time of each sweep of their lighthouse-like
X-ray beams can provide astronomers with a highly detailed set of coordinates.
An upgrade to NICER called the Station Explorer for
X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology (SEXTANT) experiment will collect
information that should not only help guide the future of the mission, but
contribute to future space exploration as a whole.
It might look messy, but there's a lot of
information in that bowl of cosmic spaghetti and meatballs.
"Even with minimal processing, this image
reveals the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant about 90 light-years across and
thought to be 5,000 to 8,000 years old," says principal investigator Keith
Gendreau from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
"We're gradually building up a new X-ray image
of the whole sky, and it's possible NICER's night time sweeps will uncover
previously unknown sources."
Even if none of that impresses you, at least you can
look at it and imagine you're an astronomer with X-ray vision - casually
star-gazing on Krypton.