Bright Young Stars Mix It Up Chandra's image of the star cluster
Trumpler 14 shows about 1,600 stars and a diffuse glow from hot
multimillion degree X-ray producing gas. The cluster has one of
the highest concentrations of massive, luminous stars in the
Galaxy. Located on the edge of a giant molecular cloud, it is
part of the Carina Complex which contains at least 8 star
clusters. The bright stars in Trumpler 14 are young (about 1
million years old), and much more massive than the Sun. They
will shine brightly, exhaust their prodigious energy, and
explode spectacularly as supernovas in a few million years. In
the meantime, the young, massive stars have a profound influence
on their environment through the ionizing effects of their
light, and the high-speed winds of particles that are pushed
away from their surfaces by the intense radiation. Shock waves
that develop in these winds can heat gas to millions of degrees
Celsius and produce intense X-ray sources. In the accompanying
image (below, right), the bright