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L. K. Townsley, P. S. Broos, E. D. Feigelson, G. P. Garmire (PSU)
Chandra is providing remarkable new views of high-mass star-forming regions, revealing all stages in the life cycle of high-mass stars and their effects on their surroundings. We present a Chandra/ACIS tour of several high-mass star-forming regions, highlighting physical processes that characterize the life of a cluster of high-mass 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 stellar sources powering great HII region complexes, suffused by both hard and soft diffuse X-ray structures caused by fast O-star winds thermalized in wind-wind collisions or by termination shocks against the surrounding media. Finally, we examine the effects of the deaths of high-mass stars that remained close to their birthplaces, exploding as supernovae within the superbubbles that these clusters created.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: townsley@astro.psu.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.