Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Steve Roy
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
(Phone: 256/544-6535)
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, CFA, Cambridge, MA
(Phone: 617/496-7998)
RELEASE: 01-113
Near the crowded core of the Milky Way galaxy, where stars
are so plentiful and shine so brightly that planets there would
never experience nighttime, astronomers have found a new
phenomenon: a cauldron of 60-million degree gas enveloping a
cluster of young stars.
Massive stars, newborn stars and stellar winds have long been
known to emit X-rays. The Chandra results are significant
because they identify this new mechanism of stellar winds
colliding to generate X-rays as energetic as those seen in
distant starburst galaxies, which are known for their furious
pace of star production.
The density of stars makes the region in and around the Arches
cluster a microcosm of what is likely occurring in starburst
galaxies.
"Our data suggest that the gas within the Arches cluster may get
so hot that it escapes from the cluster," said Cornelia Lang of
the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "The Arches and other
clusters like it may contribute to the reservoir of mysterious
hot gas long observed near the Milky Way."
Chandra observed the Arches cluster region with its Advanced CCD
Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). The research team for this
investigation included Casey Law and Antonella Fruscione from
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Cornelia Lang
and Daniel Wang from University of Massachusetts; Mark Wardle of
the University of Sydney, Australia; and Angela Cotera from
University of Arizona, Tucson.
The ACIS X-ray camera was developed for NASA by The Pennsylvania
State University, University Park, and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge. NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, AL, manages the Chandra program for the
Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. TRW, Inc., Redondo
Beach, CA, is the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The
Smithsonian's Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, MA, controls
science and flight operations.
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