By Ron Cowen
The powerful winds blown out by massive stars carry an enormous amount of energy into space, but astronomers have lacked the tools for tracking the fate of that energy.
Now, a high-resolution X-ray view of the Rosette nebula, a nearby star-forming region, has revealed for the first time that stellar winds heat surrounding gas to a scorching 6 million kelvins. The hot gas emits a diffuse glow of X rays, which the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected.