Denver Astronomical Society
Our eyes can take in just a small fraction of the light in the universe, so it took until the Space Age for humans to detect wavelengths of the highest energies. To see these photons, which are only visible from space, we must launch new telescopes every few years. The trade-off is glimpses of the most extreme objects in the cosmos. Early on, X-rays provided tentative evidence that neutron stars and black holes exist. Now, we use high-energy photons to model hot spots that whirl around on a neutron star's surface and monitor gas that flow from a ripped-apart star into a black hole's maw. New and upcoming missions are now giving us the opportunity to dive into a neutron star's incredibly dense and strange interior and experience the intense gravitational field nearest black holes.