NGC 602 is a star cluster that lies on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way. These images combine X-rays from Chandra and infrared data from James Webb (JWST). The dark ring-like structure in the JWST data is made up of dense clouds of dust. Chandra’s X-rays show young, massive stars that are illuminating the dust clouds, 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.

A new version of the “Christmas tree cluster” is also shown. 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 have been combined with optical data captured from by astrophotographer Michael Clow from his telescope in Arizona in November 2024.

This tactile plate is a physical relief map based on the intensity of Chandra X-ray and Webb infrared data, featuring a star cluster that strongly resembles the shape of a holiday wreath.

The cluster includes a giant dust cloud ring, filling up the edges of the plate. The bumpy, textured torus shape and feathery edges of the ring cloud create the shape of a wreath made of evergreen boughs. Smoother raised parts of the “wreath” representing X-rays, highlight layers within the wreath-like ring cloud.

The image is teeming with specks and dots, representing stars within the cluster. Some of the dots gleam with asterisk-shaped diffraction spikes, while others are surrounded by a sloped area. Upon closer inspection, many of the specks have spiraling arms, indicating that they are, in fact, distant galaxies.