X-ray Stars of Orion
The stars of Orion shine brightly
in visible light in planet Earth's night sky.
The
constellation harbors the closest large stellar nursery,
the Great Nebula of Orion,
a mere 1,500 light-years away.
In fact, the apparently bright clump of stars near the center
of this false color Chandra
x-ray telescope picture
are the massive stars of
the Trapezium - the
young star cluster which powers much of the nebula's
visible-light glow.
The stars shown
in blue and orange are young sun-like stars; prodigious sources
of x-rays thought to be produced in hot
stellar coronae and
surface flares in a young star's strong
magnetic field.
Our middle-aged
Sun itself was
probably thousands of times
brighter in x-rays when, like
the
Trapezium stars, it was
only a few million years old.
The
x-ray image
spans about 2.5 light-years
across the central region of the Orion Nebula.