On June 23, 2025, at 6:00 PM, Hamptons Observatory will present a free lecture, in-person at Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton, by Dr. Jonathan Schachter, a member of the original Chandra creation team. In the talk, “The Chandra X-ray Observatory: An Insider’s Perspective,” Dr. Schachter will discuss Chandra’s history, its pivotal discoveries, as well as touch on the history of X-ray astrophysics and its key personalities. Details and registration info may be found on: https://HamptonsObservatory.org
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, launched in 1999, was named after the esteemed Nobel laureate and pioneer white dwarf theoretical physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar of U Chicago. It had only a five-year expected lifetime, but Chandra is now in its 25th year and is still making momentous discoveries. This telescope was specially designed to take X-ray images and spectra from collapsed compact objects with strong gravity (e.g., neutron stars, and black holes, including at galaxy centers). It can also observe extremes of temperature and pressure in planets, stars, supernova remnants, galaxies, and galaxy clusters. Chandra has traced the separation of dark matter from light matter in the collision of galaxies and has contributed to studies of both dark matter and dark energy. As its mission continues, Chandra will carry on the discovery of startling new science about our high-energy Universe.
The TRW Inc. engineering firm worked alongside Harvard, MIT, and Penn State scientists to design and build Chandra. Key testing of the X-ray optics was performed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Harvard and MIT then deployed the satellite and served as mission control. Dr. Jonathan Schachter, the only Harvard astronomer on the TRW software test team, joined the project in 1996; although he left the team in 2000, he has continued to follow Chandra as it takes observations in its elliptical orbit around the earth. Dr. Schachter will discuss the development and history of Chandra, as well as touch on the history of X-ray astrophysics and its key personalities. He will also present some of Chandra’s pivotal discoveries, many of which have resulted from collaborations with Hubble and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope.
