Chandra Release - July 14, 2016

Visual Description: GRB 140903A

This graphic features two insets of X-ray and optical data as well as an illustration of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) called GRB 140903A.   The colors of the images and illustration are predominantly blue, green, red and yellow. In comparison to familiar everyday objects, the GRB 140903A illustration can be likened to a firework exploding in the night sky. The large panel in the graphic is the artist's illustration showing the aftermath of a neutron star merger, including the generation of a GRB. In the center is a compact object - either a black hole or a massive neutron star - and a disk of material in red left over from the merger, containing material falling towards the compact object. Energy from this infalling material drives the GRB jet shown in yellow. In orange is a wind of particles blowing away from the disk and in blue is material ejected from the compact object and expanding at very high speeds of about one tenth the speed of light.  At bottom right, an image on the left of the two smaller panels shows an optical view in pale yellow from the Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) with GRB 140903A in the middle of the square and a close-up X-ray view from Chandra (a blue-white large dot) on the right. A bright star in the optical image is unrelated to the GRB.