Spring Collection - A collection of spring-themed images is meant to celebrate the "flowering" that occurs throughout space.

In the Northern Hemisphere this week, the calendar officially passes from winter into spring when the length of the day and the night become equal as the days become longer. Meanwhile, there are places in space where blooms of the stellar variety are always growing.

This collection of images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes contains regions where stars are forming. Often nicknamed “stellar nurseries,” they are cosmic gardens from which stars – not plants – emerge from the interstellar soil of gas and dust. X-rays are energetic enough that they can penetrate the gas and dust of these stellar nurseries, giving insight to the young stars and other high-energy phenomena that are happening within, including the effects of X-rays on any planets or planet-forming disks orbiting stars.

And, like gardens here on Earth, some stellar nurseries bloom before others. These images are listed roughly by their age, representing a span from “early” to “late spring,” cosmically speaking.

The Pelican Nebula (also known as NGC 7000) and the Cat’s Paw Nebula both contain stars that are mainly about a million years old. By comparison, the Sun is over 4.5 billion years old — or more than 4,000 times the age of these stars. In this new image of the Pelican Nebula, X-rays from Chandra (pink) are combined with an optical image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). Meanwhile, the Cat’s Paw Nebula image has Chandra X-ray data (pink) overlaid on infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (red, orange, yellow, green, cyan and blue).

For stars that are slightly older — with ages between about one and three million years old — we look to NGC 346, the Flame Nebula, and Westerlund 2. For NGC 346, a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud, X-rays from Chandra (purple) are combined with an optical image from Hubble (red, green, and blue). In the Flame Nebula composite, Chandra’s X-rays (purple) are found throughout the gas and dust-filled landscape in infrared light seen by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). This Westerlund 2 image contains X-ray data from Chandra (purple) and infrared data from Webb (red, orange, green, cyan, and blue).

The most mature stars in these spring-themed images is the region around Cygnus X-1, a binary system where a black hole is partnered with a massive star. In this image of the Cygnus OB3 region, X-rays from Chandra (blue) are combined with optical data from Kitt Peak National Observatory (red and blue).

The companion star to the black hole in Cygnus X-1 is particularly interesting. Because it more than 20 times more massive than the Sun, it is likely going to explode in a supernova in the future. This event would seed the area with new elements that will become the cosmic soil for the next generation of stars.

This process of supernova explosions sending essential elements out into space will happen to many of the most massive stars in these stellar nurseries, underscoring the similar rhythms between the cycle of life here on Earth and the cycle of the stars across space.

Bonus Image: The Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 Credit: X-ray: Chandra: ASA/CXC/JHU/K. Kuntz et al.; UV/Optical: XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM/R. Willatt; Optical: Hubble: NASA/ESA/STScI/JHU/K. Kuntz et al.; Ground-based: R. J. GaBany; IR: Spitzer: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/K. Gordon; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare, K.Arcand

The striking Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) comes into focus in this multiwavelength view combining data from multiple telescopes. Visible light from wide-field ground-based observations and the Hubble Space Telescope (white, light blue, and yellow) reveals the galaxy’s sweeping spiral arms, while ultraviolet light from XMM-Newton (blue), X-rays from Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple), and infrared light from Spitzer Space Telescope (red) highlight different cosmic ingredients.

By layering these wavelengths together, astronomers can trace where stars are forming, where older stars reside, and where extreme environments—like exploding stars, million-degree gas, and matter swirling around black holes—light up the galaxy.

Located about 21 million light-years away, the Pinwheel Galaxy is roughly 170,000 light-years across, making it even larger than our own Milky Way. The light in this image began its journey to us long before humans walked the Earth.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

 

Visual Description: This release features a series of composite images, each highlighting a different star-forming region, or "stellar nursery". The bright, colorful images are individually labeled, and presented in a three by two grid.

The first image, in the grid's upper left, features a young star cluster known as Westerlund 2. Here, scores of gleaming white specks ringed in neon pink are scattered across the image in a band that stretches from our lower right to our upper left, and beyond. The pink data represent stars seen with Chandra. Clouds of brick-orange dust enter the image from our lower left, and spread along the bottom edge of the frame.

Centered at the top of the grid is NGC 346, a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Here, tiny specks in golden orange, neon blue, and white, are scattered across a dark blue sky. Long streaks of hazy cloud coalesce on the left side of the image. A large, bright, neon pink X-ray cloud, seen with Chandra, hangs in the upper right.

In the upper right corner of the grid is Cygnus OB3, the most mature stellar nursery in the batch. Here, tiny white gleaming specks fill a black sky tinged with golden orange and silver haze. Several larger white spheres with faint outer rings in blues and greens dot the image, including a black hole and a massive star at the center of the frame.

In the second row of the grid, at our lower left, is a composite image of the Cat's Paw Nebula. Here, pockets of starry blue sky appear behind thick, overlapping rings of dark orange cloud. At the center of the image, tucked amongst the clouds, is a mottled patch of purple. This patch represents X-ray data gathered by Chandra.

Centered at the bottom of the grid is the Pelican Nebula. Here, a hazy blue sky dotted with pink, white, and golden specks stretches across much of the frame. A dense, dark-orange cloud enters the composite image from lower right. Long, finger-like tendrils grow out of the cloud, as if reaching for distant baby stars.

And finally, at the lower righthand corner of the grid, is a composite image of the Flame Nebula. Here, a dense dusty-grey haze blankets the frame. Several dozen young stars light up the dust and gas cloud, white at the core with thick, neon purple-pink halos showing X-rays collected by Chandra.