English: Chandra close-up of a full-field, deep image of the Orion Nebula Cluster (M42), a rich cluster approximately 1500 ly from Earth containing over 1600 X-ray sources. About 1,400 of these are young stars in the Orion Nebula. The rest are either background galaxies or foreground stars. The observation period (of 233 hours total) was done during 6 pointings between January 8 and January 21, 2003 with Chandra's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). The image is 5.5 arcmin across, covering about 2.5 ly on a side. Colors represent different energy ranges: Red 0.3-1.0 keV, Green 1.0-3.0 keV and Blue 3.0-8.0 keV. Variations in the amount of gas along the line of sight filters out different amounts of X-rays resulting in different colors. The red X-ray sources are mostly young stars in the Orion Nebula with little absorption by intervening gas and the blue X-ray sources are mostly young stars with larger amounts of gas absorption. The luminous source in the middle of the cluster, Theta Orion Nebulais C, is the brightest and most massive star in the cluster at 33 solar masses and a luminosity of 204,000 solar luminosities. Young (1 to 10 million year old) stars in the cluster produce violent X-ray outbursts, or flares, that are much more frequent and energetic than present-day flares from our 4.6 billion-year-old Sun. It has been suggested that the Sun produced more violent, energetic X-ray flares earlier in its life.
На веб-сайте NASA размещено большое число изображений Советского/Российского космического агентства и других неамериканских космических агентств. Они вовсе не обязательно находятся в общественном достоянии.
Совместный проект SOHO (ESA & NASA) предполагает, что все материалы, созданные их зондом, защищены авторским правом и требуют разрешения для коммерческого необразовательного использования. [2]
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Название изображения
The Orion Nebula is one of the closest
star formation regions from Earth at a
distance of 1,500 light years. A favorite
for amateur astronomers and casual sky
watchers, Orion is seen as never before
in this composite image created from
Chandra and Hubble data. The wispy filaments
seen by Hubble (pink and purple)
are clouds of gas and dust that
provide the material used as fuel by
young stars. The bright point-like
sources (blue and orange) are newly
formed stars captured in X-ray light by
Chandra. These fledgling stars are seen
to flare in their X-ray intensity, which
suggests that our Sun had many violent
and energetic outbursts when it was
much younger.
Автор
Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
Заголовок
A rich cluster of young stars about 1,500 light years from Earth.
Поставщик, кто предоставил изображение
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/E.Feigelson & K.Getman et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/M. Robberto et al.