Spring Has Sprung in Space (Pinwheel Galaxy composite)

Free photos, properly licensed

This release features a series of composite images, each highlighting a different star-forming region, or "stellar nursery". The bright, colorful images are individually labeled, and presented in a three by two grid. The first image, in the grid's upper left, features a young star cluster known as Westerlund 2. Here, scores of gleaming white specks ringed in neon pink are scattered across the image in a band that stretches from our lower right to our upper left, and beyond. The pink data represent stars seen with Chandra. Clouds of brick-orange dust enter the image from our lower left, and spr