Baby Stars in the Witch Head Nebula August 21, 2006Posted by jtintle in Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), Deep Space, JPL, NASA, Nebula, Satellite, Space Agencies, Space Fotos, Witch Head Nebula.
Tags: Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), constellation Orion, IC 2118, JPL-Caltech, Luisa M. Rebull, NASA, Witch Head Nebula
NASA/JPL-Caltech/L.Rebull (SSC/ Caltech)
Eight hundred light-years away in the Orion constellation, a gigantic murky cloud called the “Witch Head” nebula is brewing baby stars. The stellar infants are revealed as pink dots in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Wisps of green in the cloud are carbon-rich molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are found on barbecue grills and in automobile exhaust on Earth. This image was obtained as part of the Spitzer Space Telescope Research Program for Teachers and Students, involving high school teachers and their students from across the United States. The infrared image is a three-color composite, in which light with a wavelength of 4.5 microns is blue, 8.0-micron light is green, and 24-micron light is red.
Baby Stars Brewing in the Witch Head Nebula May 24, 2006Posted by jtintle in Deep Space, JPL, NASA, Space Agencies, Space Fotos, Witch Head Nebula.
|NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Rebull (SSC/Caltech)|
Eight hundred light-years away in the Orion constellation, a gigantic murky cloud called the "Witch Head Nebula" is teeming with dust-obscured newborn stars waiting to be uncovered.
In this image, the super sensitive infrared eyes of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals 12 new baby stars in a small portion of the cloud commonly referred to as the Witch Head's "pointy chin."
Observations are currently underway to search for infant stars in the rest of the cloud.
The image is a four-color composite where blue represents 3.6 microns, green depicts 4.5 microns, yellow is 5.8 microns, and red is 8.0 microns