# @nasa on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/BaUYHuCnXKQ
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/11735685-nasa-instagram
- **Posted:** 2017-10-16T18:08:21.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NASA (@NASA) — https://gondola.cc/NASA

## Caption

Round and round they go - then BOOM! This animation begins with the final moments of two neutron stars (the super-dense cores of exploded massive stars), whirling around each other in a galaxy 130 million light-years away. Gravitational waves (rippling disturbance in space-time, shown here as pale arcs) bleed away orbital energy, causing the stars to move closer together and merge. 
As the stars collide, this explosive event emits light across a series of different wavelengths - first gamma rays (magenta), then ultraviolet (violet), then visible and infrared (blue-white to red) and once the jet directed toward us expanded into our view from Earth, X-rays (blue). Our Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope witnessed this event on August 17, 2017 and we watched it unfold over multiple days with a variety of other telescopes, including the Swift spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope (NASAHubble), the Spitzer Space Telescope, our Chandra X-Ray Observatory (NASAChandraXray) and our NuSTAR mission. The detectors at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) received a gravitational wave signal just 1.7 seconds before the first light was seen by Fermi, making this the first event observed in both light and gravitational waves. 
Credit: NASAGoddard/CI Lab 
#space #nasa #universe #galaxy #stars #astrophysics #astronomy #science #gammarays #ultraviolet #infrared #xrays #gravitationalwaves #neutronstars #hubble #chandra #spitzer #nustar #fermi #swift

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 737,316
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- **Comments:** 12,265

## Tags

nasa, hubble, gammarays, space, swift, spitzer, fermi, neutronstars, galaxy, ultraviolet, nustar, science, gravitationalwaves, xrays, universe, astrophysics, chandra, stars, infrared, astronomy

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