MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Rosemary Sullivant 818-354-2274
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Rosemary.Sullivant@jpl.nasa.gov
IMAGE ADVISORY: 2008-023 Feb. 11, 2008
Spitzer Catches Young Stars in Their Baby Blanket of Dust
Newborn stars peek out from beneath their natal blanket of dust in this dynamic image of
the Rho Ophiuchi dark cloud from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Called "Rho Oph" by astronomers, it's one of the closest star-forming regions to our own
solar system. Located near the constellations Scorpius and Ophiuchus, the nebula is about
407 light years away from Earth. The image is available at
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/20080211.html .
Rho Oph is made up of a large main cloud of molecular hydrogen, a key molecule
allowing new stars to form out of cold cosmic gas, with two long streamers trailing off in
different directions. Recent studies using the latest X-ray and infrared observations reveal
more than 300 young stellar objects within the large central cloud. Their median age is
only 300,000 years, very young compared to some of the universe's oldest stars, which
are more than 12 billion years old.
"Rho Oph is a favorite region for astronomers studying star formation. Because the
stars are so young, we can observe them at a very early evolutionary stage, and because
the Ophiuchus molecular cloud is relatively close, we can resolve more detail than in
more distant clusters, like Orion," said Lori Allen, lead investigator of the new
observations, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.
This false-color image of Rho Oph's main cloud, Lynds 1688, was created with data from
Spitzer's infrared array camera, which has the highest spatial resolution of Spitzer's three
imaging instruments, and its multiband imaging photometer, best for detecting cooler
materials.
The colors in this image reflect the relative temperatures and evolutionary states of the
various stars. The youngest stars are surrounded by dusty disks of gas from which they
and their potential planetary systems are forming. These young disk systems show up
as red in this image. Some of these young stellar objects are surrounded by their own
compact nebulae. More evolved stars, which have shed their natal material, are blue.
The extended white nebula in the center right of the image is a region of the cloud
glowing in infrared light due to the heating of dust by bright young stars near the cloud's
right edge. Fainter, multi-hued diffuse emission fills the image. The color of the
nebulosity depends on the temperature, composition and size of the dust grains. Most of
the stars forming now are concentrated in a filament of cold, dense gas that shows up as a
dark cloud in the lower center and left side of the image against the bright background of
the warm dust.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space
Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science
operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of
Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
Spitzer's infrared array camera was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Md. The instrument's principal investigator is Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The multiband imaging photometer for Spitzer was
built by Ball Aerospace Corporation, Boulder, Colo.; the University of Arizona; and
Boeing North American, Canoga Park, Calif. Its principal investigator is George Rieke of
the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and
-end-
To remove yourself from all mailings from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, please go to http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?a=cgLPI1NDLfIJK4J&s=llI4JaNRJhKQL9OXIvG&m=ktJSI3NRLoL5E
No comments:
Post a Comment