NGC 6357: A star formation region about 5,500 light years from Earth.

This composite image captures the star formation region called NGC 6357 located within the Milky Way galaxy. X-rays from Chandra and ROSAT (purple) reveal hundreds of point sources, which are the young stars in NGC 6357, as well as diffuse X-ray emission from hot gas. These have been combined with infrared data from Spitzer (orange) and optical data from the SuperCosmos survey (blue) to complete this spectacular cosmic vista.