A Cosmic 'Wreath' Displaying Stellar Circle of Life (Webb & Chandra composite)

This vivid composite image reveals NGC 602, a young star cluster in the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud—one of our galaxy’s nearest neighbors, located about 200,000 light-years away. Shaped like a wreath, the scene combines infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope with X-ray observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, highlighting both star-forming dust and high-energy stellar activity.

Webb reveals dense, sculpted clouds of gas and dust (in orange, yellow, green, and blue), lit from within by newborn stars. Chandra’s data (in red) shows massive stars emitting powerful winds and radiation, while a soft glow likely comes from thousands of young, low-mass stars.

The stars in NGC 602 have fewer heavier elements compared to the Sun and most of the rest of the galaxy. Instead, the conditions within NGC 602 mimic those for stars found billions of years ago when the universe was much younger. Studying clusters like this helps astronomers understand how stars formed and evolved in the early cosmos.