Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/C. Canizares; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/K. Pontoppidan; Image Processing: NASA/ESA/STScI/Alyssa Pagan, NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and J. Major
The Power of Two
The stars we see at night have formed out of large, dense cold clouds of gas and dust which are distributed throughout the disk of the Milky Way. This raw material is organized by gravity but also by rotational forces. Matter spirals onto the star as gravity gathers it together, producing disks of material raining down onto the star, and perhaps even accelerating jets off the protostellar disk blasting into space. How these processes work to form stars is an important topic, since withour stars there would be no complex chemical elements, and no planets or people. One of the nearest star forming regions is in the constellation of Ophiuchus, and called Rho Ophiuchi for the multiple star system that dominates the region.
The image above is a composite image of Rho Oph obtained by the Chandra X-ray Observatory (in purple) combined with an infrared image from NASA'S newest large space telescope, JWST. Comparing X-ray and infrared images of star forming regions is a powerful way to probe what's happening: the infrared emission measures the raw materials, the dust and gas, which are collapsing under gravity to form new stars, while X-rays from newborn active stars can penetrate large columns of gas and dust to identify newly-formed stars and to investigate their properties. The image shows beautifully structured dust clouds near Rho Oph, along with X-ray emitting young stars, some still embedded in their birthing blankets.
Published: October 14, 2024
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Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Wednesday, 16-Oct-2024 17:20:34 EDT