Space Archaeology

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Video imagery:

·       Artist’s concept of GRO J1655-40 system: NASA/CXC/A.Hobart

·       Animation of binary star system:  NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA)

·       Artist’s concept of GRO J1655-40 system: CXC/SAO/M. Weiss

·       Artist’s concept of GRO J1655-40 system with spectrum: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss

Music from Music for Non-Profits

Photos and art of galaxies, nebulae, stars, and planets.

Text: News from the Universe.

April 4, 2025, Space Archaeology, Artist's Concept.

Art of a bright star collapsing into a black hole features white, yellow, orange, and red gases in concentric rings around a hole in the center.

Text: Astronomers have conducted space "archaeology" to discover what a star was like before it collapsed into a black hole.

Animation. Two stars orbit each other. Both shine bluish white, with one larger than the other. Their orbit is an irregular oval.

Text: Once, GRO J1655-40 was a binary system - two stars orbiting one another.

Artist's Concept. A black hole sucks in red, orange, and yellow gases. 

Text: The more massive star exploded in a supernova, and the remaining core collapsed to form a black hole.

The black hole's strong gravity began pulling back matter that was dumped onto its companion star during the supernova, forming a swirling disk around the black hole.

The companion star glows bright yellow. Matter is sucked from it towards the black hole along with the yellow, red, and orange gases.

Text: Through the effects of magnetic fields and friction in the disk, some material is being sent out into space in the form of powerful winds.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory detected 18 different elements in the wind. A sample is shown here.

A graph with wavelength on the x-axis and x-ray brightness on the y-axis shows a squiggly line that slants down to the right from roughly 6, 0.6, to roughly 12, 0.2. The elements silicon, magnesium, iron, magnesium, nickle, neon, cobalt, iron, iron, and neon are listed left to right.

Text: After digging into the Chandra data, astronomers could determine by the amounts of different chemical elements that the original star was 25 times the mass of the Sun before exploding and forming a black hole.

This news was brought to you in part by the Chandra X-Ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.