Have you ever looked up at the sky and wondered
what you are looking at?  Of course you have seen
the stars, but what exactly is a star?  What else is
out there?  And if everything is so far away, how
do we even know what is out there?  

The Milky Way

Don't worry, the answers to these question and many
more all lie ahead.   

Look at the following picture, what do you see?

This is an X-ray image of the Crab Nebula.  The bright
white dot at the inner region is the Crab Nebula pulsar,
a rapidly rotating neutron star.  As interesting as this is,
it gets even better.  Using images collected from the
Chandra X-ray Observatory, we can learn more about
this picture.  You will learn how we can interpret this data,
in a manner similar to an astrophysicist.
You will learn how to determine the photons' arrival time,
the energy, and the position in the sky so you can gain
a better understanding of the picture you will view.

So let's have some fun interpreting some data.