Westerlund 2: A Stellar Sight (Forwarded)
- From: Andrew Yee <ayee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:23:05 GMT
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
For Release: January 23, 2008
Westerlund 2: A Stellar Sight
[http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/wd2/]
This Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows Westerlund 2, a young star
cluster with an estimated age of about one or two million years. Until
recently little was known about this cluster because it is heavily
obscured by dust and gas. However, using infrared and X-ray observations
to overcome this obscuration, Westerlund 2 has become regarded as one of
the most interesting star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. It contains
some of the hottest, brightest and most massive stars known.
This Chandra image of Westerlund 2 shows low energy X-rays in red,
intermediate energy X-rays in green and high energy X-rays in blue. The
image shows a very high density of massive stars that are bright in
X-rays, plus diffuse X-ray emission.
An incredibly massive double star system called WR20a is visible as the
bright yellow point just below and to the right of the cluster's center.
This system contains stars with masses of 82 and 83 times that of the Sun.
The dense streams of matter steadily ejected by these two massive stars,
called stellar winds, collide with each other and produce copious amounts
of X-ray emission. This collision is seen at different angles as the stars
orbit around each other every 3.7 days. Several other bright X-ray sources
may also show evidence for collisions between winds in massive binary
systems.
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