What does X-ray light show us? Beck Bray & Patrick Meyer 01.27.01 Many things in space emit X-rays, among them are black holes, neutron stars, binary star systems, supernova remnants, stars, the Sun, and even some comets!    Black holes and neutron stars are both the remnants of massive stars that died in a fiery supernova explosion. After a massive star explodes, it will leave behind a shell of dust and gas and a very dense core at the middle. Depending on the mass of the star, the core will either become a black hole, a region from which no light or matter can escape, or a neutron star, a strongly magnetic, dense object. Neutron stars that emit regular pulses of radiation are called pulsars. Many pulsars emit X-rays.     Above is a false-color X-ray image of a binary system that has either a black hole or a neutron star in it. It was taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray emission from this object is due to matter falling from a normal star onto the nearby dense star. The halo (beyond the yellow ring in the center) is due to scattering by interstellar dust grains along the line of sight to the source. The sharp horizontal line is an instrumental effect.   ©2001 NASAkids.com , Science@NASA  Beck Bray & Patrick Meyer ©2001 The Aurora Collection, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Site Development by: Interactive Multimedia. Inc.