NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory captures 'super' star cluster near Earth

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has been quite instrumental in helping astronomers understand how stars are being produced. Researchers say that Westerlund 1 is the closest "super" star cluster to Earth.

According to astronomers, most of the star formations take place in clusters. About 10 million years ago, the Milky Way produced stars in large numbers but this has reduced gradually.

Although our galaxy contains very few super star clusters, the ones that do provide crucial information about the previous period when the majority of the stars in our galaxy evolved. With a mass of 50,000–100,000 Suns, Westerlund 1 is the largest of the Milky Way's surviving mega star clusters. With a distance of almost 13,000 light-years, it is also the nearest super star cluster to Earth.

EWOCS, The Extended Westerlund 1 and 2 Open Clusters Survey is a project run by astronomers at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics in Palermo. As a part of the project, they monitored Westerlund 1 for roughly a period of 12 days.

More about Westerlund 1

NASA's Chandra and Hubble space telescopes have provided crucial information about this super star cluster.

"The X-rays detected by Chandra show young stars (mostly represented as white and pink) as well as diffuse heated gas throughout the cluster (coloured pink, green, and blue, in order of increasing temperatures for the gas)," said NASA's official website.

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Westerlund 1 is one of the oldest star clusters to exist and is thus helpful for astronomers to understand the evolution of stars and study them in detail. The EWOCS project has been successful in capturing roughly 6,000 X-ray sources, including stars that have a lower mass than the sun as well.

One of the discoveries made by Chandra is that 1,075 stars are crammed into the core of Westerlund 1 at a distance of four light-years.

Since only a few super star clusters are left in the galaxy, they are an important source of information for astronomers to study how they came into existence. NASA's advanced technology like the Chandra helps with the same.

(With inputs from agencies)