Chandra Release - March 6, 2013

Visual Description: 47 Tucanae

An X-ray image reveals 47 Tucanae, a globular cluster located about 15,000 light years away in the outskirts of the Milky Way. The image is dominated by bright dots of black, orange, pink, yellow, dark blue, and shades of purple, with a few bright white dots, scattered across a black background.  It resembles a large display of fireworks, or many sparklers against a dark sky. The image was constructed from a long Chandra X-ray Observatory observation of 47 Tucanae. Lower-energy X-rays are colored red, X-rays with intermediate energies are green, and the highest-energy X-rays are shown in blue.  In the image, a double, or binary, star system labeled as X7 contains a neutron star slowly pulling gas away from a companion star with a mass much lower than the Sun. It is a large bright orange source just off center.