The Chandra X-ray Observatory is providing remarkable new views of massive star-forming regions, revealing all stages in the life cycle of high-mass stars and their effects on their surroundings. We will tour several such regions, highlighting physical processes that characterize the life of a cluster of massive stars, from deeply-embedded cores too young to have established an HII region to superbubbles so large that they shape our views of galaxies. Along the way we see that X-ray observations reveal hundreds of pre-main sequence stars accompanying the massive stars that power great HII region complexes. The most massive stars themselves are often anomalously hard X-ray emitters; this may be a new indicator of close binarity or strong magnetic fields. These complexes are sometimes suffused by diffuse X-ray structures, signatures of multi-million-degree plasmas created by fast O-star winds. In older regions we see the X-ray remains of the deaths of massive stars that stayed close to their birthplaces, exploding as cavity supernovae within the superbubbles that these clusters created.
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| 30 Doradus (Chandra soft X-rays in red, MCELS H-alpha in green, Spitzer 8 microns in blue) |
Relevant Papers
"The Integrated Diffuse X-ray Emission of the Carina Nebula Compared to Other Massive Star-forming Regions", Townsley et al. 2011
Talk Slides
