Chandra Release - April 16, 2019

Visual Description: CDF-S XT2

The image features an X-ray pullout from an optical image of a neutron star merger, labeled as XT2. The dominant colors in the image are black, red, orange, and white with a bright orange spot in the pullout that is changing over time. These images show the location of an event, discovered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, that likely signals the merger of two neutron stars. A bright burst of X-rays in this source, dubbed XT2, could give astronomers fresh insight into how neutron stars - dense stellar objects packed mainly with neutrons - are built.
XT2 is located in a galaxy about 6.6 billion light years from Earth. The wider field of view shows an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope of a portion of the CDF-S field, while the inset shows a Chandra image focusing only on XT2. The location of XT2, which was not detected in optical images, is shown by a small rectangle, and its host galaxy is a small, oval-shaped object located slightly to the upper left.