About X-ray Astronomy
To understand X-ray astronomy, it is necessary to talk about light and how it works. The pages listed below will attempt to explain the electromagnetic spectrum – the full range of energies that characterize light, how commonplace things appear in infrared and X-ray light.
- The electromagnetic spectrum
- Before talking about X-ray astronomy, learn what an X-ray is; and, no, it is not what your doctor takes when you have a broken bone!
- Seeing in a different light
- Looking at the Universe with X-ray eyes means looking at it in a whole new light. Learn about a few familiar objects that we look at in different types of light before thinking about a whole Universe of light.
- Images, spectra, and light curves
- Astronomers rely on light from distant objects to learn about them, in their toolbox are images, spectra and light curves. Learn a little about these tools and what they tell astronomers here.
- Multiwavelength astronomy
- Why look at the Universe in different wavelengths of light? Click through to this page to see how different the sky looks when we look at different types of light.
Science Pages
