Stellar
sparklers
that last
While fireworks only last a short time here on Earth, a bundle of cosmic
sparklers in a nearby cluster of stars will be going off for a very long time. NGC
1333 is a star cluster populated with many young stars that are less than 2
million years old -- a blink of an eye in astronomical terms for stars like these
expected to burn for billions of years.
This new composite image combines X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray
Observatory (shown in pink) with infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space
Telescope (shown in red) as well as optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey
and the National Optical Astronomical Observatories’ Mayall 4-meter telescope on Kitt Peak (red, green, blue). The Chandra data reveal 95 young stars
glowing in X-ray light, 41 of which had not been seen previously using Spitzer
because they lacked infrared emission from a surrounding disk.
To make a detailed study of the X-ray properties of young stars, a team of
astronomers, led by Elaine Winston from the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, analyzed the Chandra X-ray data of both NGC 1333, located about
780 light-years from Earth, and the Serpens cloud, a similar cluster of young
stars about 1,100 light-years away. They then compared the two datasets with
observations of the young stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster, perhaps the most
well-studied young star cluster in the Milky Way galaxy.
The researchers found that the X-ray brightness of the stars in NGC 1333 and
the Serpens cloud depends on the total brightness of the stars across the electromagnetic spectrum, as found in previous studies of other clusters. They also
found that the X-ray brightness mainly depends on the size of the star. In other
words, the bigger the stellar sparkler, the brighter it will glow in X-rays.
These results were published in the July 2010 issue of the Astronomical Journal and are available online.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the
Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls
Chandra’s science and flight operations.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the
Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center
at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Science operations are
conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin
Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at
Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
For more information about Spitzer, visit: http://spitzer.caltech.edu and
http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer.
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