Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.
It's a bird... it's a plane... it's a super star cluster! NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope has imaged a star cluster that is"super" in every way. Westerlund 1 is super-large, super-massive, super-young, super-close — and it is creating stars at a super-fast rate.is located around 13,000 light-years away from Earth — meaning it's very close, relatively speaking — and the 3 million to 5 million-year-old star cluster is around 7 light-years wide.
The new Chandra data has tripled the number of known X-ray sources in Westerlund 1. Prior to the EWOCS project, Chandra had detected 1,721 X-ray sources in the superstar cluster; the EWOCS data, on the other hand, has revealed almost 6,000 X-ray sources. These include faint stars within Westerlund 1 to study.
Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.
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