Archiving may seem like a tedious chore to many people as keeping records and making sure they are properly filed isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time. When you really stop to think about it you’ll realize how important this task really is. No one wants to reverse engineer a spacecraft because they lost the blueprints; or misplace a beautiful composite image of the Moon because the hard drive wasn’t backed up. So to celebrate American Archive Month, the Chandra X-ray Observatory released 6 new composite images captured by the system. The Chandra telescope detects light in the X-ray spectrum, allowing it to observe high-energy phenomenon’s throughout the Universe, like star clusters, pulsars and supernova remnants. Combining Chandra’s X-ray data with other satellites creates the most amazing composite images that are deserving of the archives. Stars form inside thick clouds of interstellar dust. Nearly 20,000 light years away, Westerlund 2 is one such star cluster. The newly created bright, pink-tinged stars are at the center of the cluster and create intense ultraviolet light and strong stellar winds that sweep away the surrounding clouds. The light from the visible spectrum picks up the clouds but cannot penetrate into their depths, as … Continue reading