NASA’s Chandra Finds Young Stars Dim Quickly

NASA
The images of Trumpler 3 and NGC 2353 are open clusters that contains hundreds of young stars that are gravitationally bound together because they formed from the same gas cloud. In this composite image of the clusters, X-rays from Chandra (purple) have been combined with an optical image from the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii (red, green, and blue). The stars look like fuzzy dots of different sizes dotting the darkness of space.
Scientists have found that young stellar cousins of our Sun are calming down and dimming more quickly in their X-ray output than previously thought, according to a study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ/K. Getman; Optical/IR: PanSTARRS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

These images, released on April 14, 2026, show two open star clusters, Trumpler 3 (left) and NGC 2353 (right). They represent a recent study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory that shows how young Sun-like stars are dimmer in X-rays than previously thought.

This latest study looked at eight clusters of stars between the ages of 45 million and 750 million years old. The researchers found that Sun-like stars in these clusters unleashed only about a quarter to a third of the X-rays they expected. This quieting of young stars is a benefit for the prospects for life on orbiting planets around these stars — not a threat.

Learn more about what this finding means.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ/K. Getman; Optical/IR: PanSTARRS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

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