Goddard Glossary: X-Rays

Q: What do vampires and X-rays have in common?
A: They don’t reflect in most mirrors!

For Goddard Glossary and #NASAHalloween, we took a look at why studying X-rays from the universe requires specially designed mirrors.

Music Provided by Universal Production Music: “Liar Liar" by Frederick Kron [SESAC]

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Katy Mersmann (NASA/GSFC): Producer

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Video Description:
0:00 A woman with brown hair and a black shirt in front of an X-ray image of a supernova. The word X-ray is written above her head.
0:07 A slow pan along an X-ray of of a rib cage.
0:11 Back to the woman talking.
0:14 Slow zoom on an X-ray image of a supernova, a pinkish shape like a rose seen top down, with slightly blurred edges.
0:15 A pan along a wavy line, with segments of the line labeled each type of electromagnetic energy on the spectrum, starting with radio and ending with gamma waves. The waves in the line get tighter as the line progresses.
0:24 Back to the woman talking.
0:28 A graphic depicting the size of optical light waves, with the waves graphed in nanometers along the bottom. Above the waves, the wavelength size is compared to E. coli bacteria.
0:31 Fade to a similar graphic depicting the size of X-ray waves. The graphed waves are much tighter, and the waves are compared to the size of an oxygen atom.
0:34 Spitzer, a long silver cylinder, in a clean room. A person in a white clean room suit kneels in front of the telescope.
0:35 Hubble, a silver cylinder with two solar panels on each side, orbiting in space.
0:36 The Webb primary mirror array, composed of gold hexagons, in a clean room. Two people in white clean room suits look up at the mirrors.
0:37 Back to the woman talking.
0:38 Illustration of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in space.
0:39 Illustration of the XRISM spacecraft in space.
0:41 Tight shot of one of the XRISM instrument which looks like a half-circle with thin flat thin strips stacked on top of each other.
0:44 Animation of light filtered through an X-ray mirror array. Orange photons of light are directed through angled silver mirrors, so they focus into a tighter point of light.
0:50 Back to the woman talking.
0:53 Animation of a bright white neutron star.
0:55 Animation of a black hole jet.
0:57 Back to the woman talking.