This all-sky image shows 22 months of X-ray data recorded by NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) payload — traveling aboard the Station. International Space Agency—during its night sweeps between the different targets it aims at.
NICER’s primary goals require it to target and track cosmic energy sources as the space station orbits Earth every 93 minutes. But when the sun sets and night falls on this orbital outpost, the NICER team keeps its detectors active while the instrument moves from one target to another, which can happen eight times during each orbit.
Each arc marks the path of the X-rays, as well as the occasional impacts of energetic particles, which are captured during these nocturnal movements. The brightness of each point in the image is the result of these contributions, as well as the time NICER has spent looking in that direction. A diffuse glow saturates the sky with X-rays, even far from the sources where the glow originates.
