HUNDREDS of bright X-ray beacons have turned up unexpectedly in a nursery of
newborn heavyweight stars. Astronomers say the sources, captured in images from
NASA’s Chandra X-ray satellite, strike a blow to their understanding of these
hot spots.
“Life in these areas is much more complicated than we thought,” says Ed
Churchwell of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Churchwell used Chandra to look at a region of the sky 6000 light years away
where around a dozen stars, up to about 100 times the mass of our Sun, are
forming. He expected to see strong X-rays from each star…
