Turn on the Lights

A young star cluster glitters like a display of Christmas lights in this recently released X-ray image from the space-based Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Known as Westerlund 2, the cluster is only one million to two million years old. Its hottest stars, which produce the most X-rays, are in blue; less-energetic stars are coded yellow and red. The cluster is about 20,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Centaurus. [NASA/CXC/Univ. de Liège/Y. Naze et al]