[Normal Stars and WD -- Oral ]

The Chandra Carina Complex Project

Leisa Townsley, Penn State University

A recent Chandra VLP surveyed 1.4 square degrees of the Great Nebula in Carina with 22 ~60ks ACIS-I pointings, providing remarkable new views of this massive star-forming complex. We will explore some early results of this survey, highlighting physical processes that characterize the life of this ``cluster of clusters,'' an example of the fundamental building blocks of starburst galaxies. This Chandra survey reveals over 14,000 X-ray point sources in Carina; most are pre-main sequence stars accompanying >100 massive stars powering this extensive HII region complex. This X-ray-selected sample of young stars can be used to study disk frequency and evolution in the proximity of massive stars. Some of these massive stars are hard X-ray emitters; this may be a new indicator of close binarity or magnetic fields. Carina is suffused by diffuse X-ray structures, signatures of multi-million-degree plasmas created by fast O-star winds or by the deaths of massive stars that stayed close to their birthplaces, exploding as cavity supernovae within the proto-superbubble that the Carina complex is creating.