A Forward-Looking Retrospective
The year 2022 will be remembered in the annals of science, perhaps most clearly for showing the power of working together to achieve new understandings. In particular, the power of the Chandra X-ray Observatory and JWST (newly launched December 25, 2021) brought us new views of star formation, the bending of spacetime by galaxy clusters, and the early and ancient universe, with the promises of more excitement and revelations to come. We addressed unusual questions: is the expansion of the Universe really the same in all directions? What goes on inside the Sun? Are there planets in other galaxies beyond the Milky Way? How bright can a gamma-ray burst be? We also celebrated important milestones: the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of the third Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (renamed Copernicus), the twentieth anniversary of the launch of INTEGRAL, the tenth anniversary of the launch of NuSTAR, and, most notably, the first science results of IXPE, the Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer, providing measures of the geometry of the high energy universe. And although disastrous events here on earth were sadly reflected in the heavens, the past year still helped re-affirm the beauty of the one sky that covers us all.
HEASARC Picture of the Week: 2022
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