chandra_301 August 31st, 2005
Credit: NASA/CXC/PSU/L.Townsley et al
Chandra's image of Trumpler 14 shows about 1,600 stars and a diffuse glow from hot X-ray producing gas. The cluster has an unusually high concentration of massive, luminous, young (~1 million years old) stars. X-rays can be produced by shock waves in unstable winds flowing away from massive young stars. The diffuse X-ray glow is likely due to the combined action of many such winds on a scale of several light years. The bright, diffuse glow in the lower part of the image (the gap between the upper and lower portions of the image is an instrumental artifact) is from a gas cloud that has been enriched with oxygen and other heavy elements, probably by a supernova that exploded thousands of years ago.
Provider: Chandra X-ray Observatory
Image Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2005/trump/
Curator: Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA
Image Use Policy: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/image_use.html
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