‘Hand of God’ spotted by NASA’s NuSTAR telescope

In this image, X-ray light seen by Chandra with energy ranges of 0.5 to 2 kiloelectron volts (keV) and 2 to 4 keV is shown in red and green, respectively, while X-ray light detected by NuSTAR in the higher-energy range of 7 to 25 keV is blue.

NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has produced new images of a pulsar wind nebula, revealing a striking formation nicknamed the “Hand of God”.

Imaged in high-energy X-rays for the first time, the structure is called a pulsar wind nebula. It’s powered by the leftover, dense core of a star that blew up in a supernova explosion. The stellar corpse, called PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short, is a pulsar: it rapidly spins around, seven times per second, firing out a particle wind into the material around it — material that was ejected in the star’s explosion.

The red cloud at the end of the finger region is a different structure, called RCW 89. Astronomers think the pulsar’s wind is heating the cloud, causing it to glow with lower-energy X-ray light.

“NuSTAR’s unique viewpoint, in seeing the highest-energy X-rays, is showing us well-studied objects and regions in a whole new light,” NuSTAR telescope principal investigator Fiona Harrison, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement. The areas of the object shown in blue were identified by NuSTAR, while the green and red colored areas represent lower-energy X-ray light previously detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Surface Optics Corp. applied the thermal control coating used on coverings for the NuSTAR optics modules.