A gallery of 16 galaxies from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is making the rounds again, and it rewards a close look. Each image layers Chandra's X-ray view over visible and infrared light from telescopes including Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope. The result is a set of portraits showing black hole jets, galaxies colliding head-on, and star birth hidden behind thick dust.

NASA first released the collection on Aug. 25, 2026, and it reached a wider audience this week through ScienceDaily. The images are color-coded composites. Colors are assigned to different kinds of light that human eyes cannot see, so they are not what a person would see through a telescope.

The full set is posted on the Chandra X-ray Center's galaxy gallery page, with high-resolution downloads and captions for each galaxy.

The value of the gallery is what the X-rays add — a layer of activity hidden from ordinary telescopes. In many of these galaxies, the most violent activity shows up only at X-ray wavelengths.

Centaurus A: A Jet Tens of Thousands of Light-Years Long

Centaurus A is one of the closest active galaxies to Earth, and its portrait is the gallery's most dramatic. A dark lane of dust, left over from a past galaxy merger, crosses a glowing elliptical galaxy. A narrow stream of high-energy particles shoots out from the central black hole and stretches tens of thousands of light-years, NASA says.

This image draws on the widest mix of instruments in the set: Chandra and NASA's IXPE X-ray observatory, optical data from the European Southern Observatory and infrared light from Webb. IXPE measures how X-ray light is polarized, which helps scientists study the magnetic fields that shape the jet.

Messier 106, also in the gallery, shows what jets do to a galaxy over time. Jets from its central black hole heat surrounding gas and create two unusual extra spiral arms that glow in X-rays.

M82, the Cigar Galaxy: Superwinds of Million-Degree Gas

Messier 82 is seen almost edge-on, and its X-ray glow forms plumes rising above and below the disk. These are superwinds: gas heated to millions of degrees by intense star formation and exploding stars, blasting outward for thousands of light-years.

NASA says an interaction with a neighboring galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago triggered the burst of star formation. The image combines data from five observatories: Chandra, NuSTAR, Hubble, Webb and the retired Spitzer Space Telescope. A similar wind appears in NGC 4631, the Whale Galaxy, where hot gas from the disk spills into a vast surrounding halo.

Arp 143 and NGC 3256: Galaxies Caught Mid-Collision

Arp 143 looks like a cosmic ripple. When a smaller galaxy plunged through the center of a larger one, it sent a ring of compressed gas expanding outward, triggering new stars along the way. Chandra highlights the hot gas and energetic star systems along that ring, while Hubble shows the bright young stars.

NGC 3256 is messier. Two gas-rich spiral galaxies are merging into one massive system, scattering stars and gas in tangled tidal tails. NASA describes it as a preview of the eventual merger between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy, billions of years from now.

II Zw 096 shows the same process hidden from view. Webb's infrared data reveal a powerful burst of star formation buried behind thick dust in this merging system. Visible light alone would miss most of it.

Two Kinds of Light Reveal More Than One

Each wavelength captures a different temperature and type of activity. Visible light mostly shows starlight. Infrared light passes through dust and reveals cool gas and newborn stars that are hidden at visible wavelengths. X-rays come from the most extreme environments: gas heated to millions of degrees, matter falling toward black holes, and debris from stellar explosions.

That is why the combination matters — each layer fills gaps in the others. In Messier 33 and NGC 3938, two nearby face-on spirals, Chandra picks out X-ray binaries, which are dead stars pulling gas from companions, as well as the remains of supernovas. Those objects are scattered among star-forming arms that other telescopes show in detail. Laid on top of each other, the layers show both where stars are being born and where they are dying.

Building these composites takes careful processing. Image specialists at the Chandra X-ray Center, including L. Frattare, J. Major and K. Arcand, align data from different telescopes, which often have different resolutions and fields of view. They then assign each wavelength band a color so features that overlap in space can be told apart. The colors follow a consistent logic within each image but can vary from one galaxy to the next, so the captions are worth reading.

X-ray astronomy must be done from space, because Earth's atmosphere absorbs X-rays. Chandra, launched in 1999, remains one of NASA's flagship observatories for this work.

The gallery also includes two barred spirals, NGC 1672 and NGC 1385. In both, a central bar of stars funnels gas inward toward the core, feeding new stars and, in NGC 1672, growing black holes. NGC 4725, a one-armed barred spiral, shows how an earlier encounter with another galaxy can stir up gas and spark a ring of star formation, according to the Chandra team.

The rest of the gallery covers a wide range of galaxy types. It includes the Sombrero Galaxy with its hot gas halo, the rare polar-ring galaxy NGC 660, the young dwarf galaxy NGC 1569 and Messier 90, which is losing its star-forming gas as it falls into the Virgo Cluster. Readers can browse all 16 images in full resolution on NASA's gallery page.

The bottom line: the Chandra gallery is not a discovery, but it is one of the clearest demonstrations of why astronomers combine telescopes. The X-ray layer reveals the black hole jets, superheated winds and collision debris that make these galaxies so active.

What Readers Want to Know

What is the Chandra galaxy gallery?

A set of 16 composite images that NASA released on Aug. 25, 2026, combining Chandra X-ray data with images from Hubble, Webb, and other telescopes.

Are the colors real?

They are assigned colors. X-ray and infrared light are invisible to human eyes, so each type of light is given a color to show it.

Which images show black hole jets?

Centaurus A, with a particle jet tens of thousands of light-years long, and Messier 106, where jets heat gas into extra spiral arms.

Which galaxies are colliding?

Arp 143, a ring galaxy formed by a head-on collision, and NGC 3256 and II Zw 096, which are mergers in progress.

Why combine X-ray and infrared data?

X-rays reveal superheated gas and black hole activity, while infrared light reveals dust-hidden stars and cool gas. Together they show more than either can alone.

Where can I see the full images?

On NASA's Chandra gallery page and the Chandra X-ray Center website.