- Nowe zdjęcie przypominające wieniec bożonarodzeniowy przedstawia młode gwiazdy rozświetlające gęste, ciemne chmury pyłu.
- Zdjęcie przedstawia NGC 602, gromadę gwiazd w Małym Obłoku Magellana, pobliskiej galaktyce[{” attribute=”” tabindex=”0″ role=”link”>Milky Way.
- This composite combines X-ray data from Chandra (shown in red) and infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope (depicted in orange, yellow, green, and blue).
- Chandra’s X-rays highlight the powerful stellar winds from massive young stars scattered across the cluster.
Wreaths have long symbolized the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, making it especially fitting that astronomers study the stellar lifecycle in a place resembling a giant holiday wreath.
This place is the star cluster NGC 602, located on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way about 200,000 light-years away. The stars in NGC 602 contain fewer heavy elements than the Sun and most stars in the Milky Way. This environment mirrors the conditions of the universe billions of years ago, providing a glimpse into the early days of star formation.
Ten nowy obraz łączy dane z[{” attribute=”” tabindex=”0″ role=”link”>NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with a previously released image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The dark ring-like outline of the wreath seen in Webb data (represented as orange, yellow, green, and blue) is made up of dense clouds of filled dust.
Meanwhile, X-rays from Chandra (red) show young, massive stars that are illuminating the wreath, sending high-energy light into interstellar space. These X-rays are powered by winds flowing from the young, massive stars that are sprinkled throughout the cluster. The extended cloud in the Chandra data likely comes from the overlapping X-ray glow of thousands of young, low-mass stars in the cluster.
In addition to this cosmic wreath, a new version of the “Christmas tree cluster” is also now available. Like NGC 602, NGC 2264 is a cluster of young stars between one and five million years old. (For comparison, the Sun is a middle-aged star about 5 billion years old — about 1,000 times older.) In this image of NGC 2264, which is much closer than NGC 602 at a distance of about 2,500 light-years from Earth, Chandra data (red, green, and blue) has been combined with optical data (green and white) captured by astrophotographer Michael Clow from his telescope in Arizona in November 2024.
Centrum lotów kosmicznych Marshalla w Huntsville w stanie Alabama zarządza programem Chandra. Centrum rentgenowskie Chandra w Obserwatorium Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory kontroluje operacje naukowe z Cambridge w stanie Massachusetts oraz operacje lotnicze z Burlington w stanie Massachusetts.
