Nearby Star-Forming Region Seen as a Multitude of New Stars
Contact:
Christopher Wanjek
wanjek@gsfc.nasa.gov
301-286-4453January 9, 2001
San Diego, Calif. -- PHOTO RELEASE: NGC 3603 is a bustling region of star birth in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, about 20,000 light years from Earth. This Chandra image resolves for the first time the individual X-ray sources in this star-forming region. What is happening here is likely happening in distant starburst galaxies, bright galaxies flush with new stars.
Astronomers think that X rays from starburst galaxies come from a combination of massive stars, the collision of stellar winds, supernova remnants, and neutron stars or black holes in binary star systems.
In nearby NGC 3603, the closest large starburst region, astronomers can now see that X rays are emitted from massive stars and stellar wind. (The stars are too young to have produced supernovae or have evolved into neutron stars.) The Chandra observation of NGC 3603 provides strong evidence that the theory of X-ray emission in starburst galaxies is correct. The observation also provides new clues about star formation.
Specifically, the Chandra image reveals dozens of extremely massive stars born in a burst of star formation about two million years ago. The dots in the picture represent X-ray bright stars. Some are known massive stars; others had not been identified previously. The number of X-ray stars increases dramatically near the center of NGC 3603 at the center of the image.
The image to the right reveals the central cluster in greater detail. The grayscale optical image (from Hubble Space Telescope) below this shows an overlay of the X-ray emission contours of the cluster center. Images from earlier X-ray satellites revealed this central region as one X-ray source.
For more information, refer to AAS poster display 38.15, "Resolving X-ray Emission in the Galactic 'Starburst' NGC 3603 with Chandra" by Dr. Michael F. Corcoran (an astronomer with the Universities Space Research Association at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) and colleagues.
NOTE: NGC 3603 is an H II region, a nebula or large cloud of hydrogen stripped of electrons.
For the Chandra image, refer to Chandra's website or the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" for January 24, 2001.
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