Chandra Release - December 18, 2002

Visual Description: RCW 38

A Chandra image of RCW 38 shows an X-ray view of a star cluster. In the center of the image, there is a bright off-white blob of spots that resembles a bubbly texture, surrounded by smaller, darker spots. These smaller spots appear to be spreading outwards from the center, but creating an irregular pattern. The overall color scheme of the image is predominantly green, blue and dark red. At a distance of 6,000 light years from Earth, the star cluster RCW 38 is a relatively close star-forming region. This image shows almost two hundred hot, very young stars that formed less than a million years ago. In addition to the point-like emission from stars, the Chandra image revealed a diffuse cloud of X-rays enveloping the star cluster. The X-ray spectrum of the cloud shows an excess of high-energy X-rays, which indicates that the X-rays come from trillion-volt electrons moving in a magnetic field. Such particles are typically produced by exploding stars, or in the strong magnetic fields around neutron stars or black holes, none of which is evident in RCW 38.