Normal Stars & Star Clusters

This composite image shows the Rosette star formation region, located about 5,000 light years from Earth. Data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are colored red and outlined by a white line. The X-rays reveal hundreds of young stars in the central cluster and fainter clusters on either side. Optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey and the Kitt Peak National Observatory (purple, orange, green and blue) show large areas of gas and dust, including giant pillars that remain behind after intense radiation from massive stars has eroded the more diffuse gas.

This image shows the symbiotic system known as CH Cyg, located only about 800 light years from Earth. The large image shows an optical view of CH Cyg, using the Digitized Sky Survey, and the inset shows a composite image containing Chandra X-ray data in red, optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in green, and radio data from the Very Large Array (VLA) in blue.

This composite image of X-rays from Chandra (violet) and infrared data from Spitzer (red, green, and blue) reveals a beautiful scene of star formation within our Galaxy. There are hundreds of very young stars inside and around the cloud -- ranging from a few millions years old outside the cloud to less than a million in the interior -- making it an important testing ground for star formation. By combining the data from these two observatories, researchers have shown that radiation from massive stars may trigger the formation of many more stars than previously thought.

Back in 2002, we released a colorful image of the star-forming region known as 30 Doradus (also called the Tarantula Nebula.) At the time, we thought it was a beautiful image - and it was - of this pocket of intense stellar birth and death in the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud.

Chandra's 30 Doradus from 2002 (left) and 2008 (right)