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What it is : NGC 602 , a star cluster .
Where it is:200,000 light - years distant in the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy .
This image of NGC 602 is a composite of X-ray (red) and infrared (orange, yellow, green and blue) light from the Chandra and James Webb space telescopes, respectively.
When it was share : Dec. 17 , 2024 .
Why it ’s so limited : The Small Magellanic Cloud ( SMC ) does n’t get much attention . It ’s only visible from the Southern Hemisphere and is overshadowed by the nearby expectant Magellanic Cloud . However , like its bigger brother , the SMC is a dwarf extragalactic nebula orb ourMilky Way galaxy , and it ’s arrant for studying how stars imprint in a extragalactic nebula that ’s airless to , but very unlike from theMilky Way .
A quality example is the Christmas wreath - mold NGC 602 , a clustering of raging , new blue stars bear from the collapse of a gas swarm . The gas from which they were formed still clothe them , but their radiation can be seen searing through it , sculpting it , leaving only tall pillars of flatulence that orient toward the naughty star topology .
An uncropped image of NGC 602.
That gas pedal , however , is unlike from what is found in the far larger Milky Way . The accelerator pedal in the SMC stop few heavy element — created by multiple generations of stars exploding and reforming — than does the petrol in the Milky Way . NGC 602 , astronomers think , is a valuable mimicker of stars carry gazillion of twelvemonth ago , when the existence was younger . NGC 602 may offer a glimpse of what that other existence was like .
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This image is a composite of information fascinate by the Chandra X - beam Observatory — the world ’s most powerful X - beam telescope — and the infrared - sensitiveJames Webb Space Telescope .
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Chandra ’s 10 - ray data point , show in red , reveal the presence of young , massive star emitting high - energy radiation . JWST ’s orange , yellowish , green and blasphemous infrared data spotlight the region ’s intricate complex body part of rubble and gas . Together , the data creates a view of the life cycle of stars , from their formation to the dispersal of star stuff .
The new composite image of NGC 602 was release byNASAto crisscross the vacation time of year together with a newanimated variation of NGC 2264 , better known as the “ Christmas Tree Cluster . ” That look-alike combines Adam - ray datum from Chandra with optical images from Arizona - based astrophotographer Michael Clow demand in November .
For more lofty quad images , check out ourSpace Photo of the Week archives .
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