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Eighty-four lights escaped the telescope's blind spot

Surreal Nogical observatory where faint ultraviolet-blue lights hide among the ordinary specks of a spiral galaxy. — Original Nogical illustration · Interpretive image, not Chandra data

A search of Chandra's archive found 84 objects in six galaxies that emit unusually low-energy X-rays and intense ultraviolet radiation. That population is confirmed; what produces it is not. Accreting black holes, neutron stars or white dwarfs are leading possibilities, and proposed links to supernovae and galactic ionization remain interpretations to test.

Next in the drawer →The missing stone had been standing as a cross all along