A nebula known as "the Spider" glows
fluorescent green in an infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). The Spider,
officially named IC 417, lies near a much smaller object called NGC
1931, not pictured in the image. Together, the two are called "The
Spider and the Fly" nebulae. Nebulae are clouds of interstellar gas and
dust where stars can form.
The Spider, located about 10,000 light-years from Earth in
the constellation Auriga, is clearly a site of star formation. It
resides in the outer part of the Milky Way, almost exactly in the
opposite direction from the galactic center. A group of students,
teachers and scientists focused their attention on this region as part
of the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) in 2015. They
worked on identifying new stars in this area.
One of the largest clusters of young stars
in the Spider can be seen easily in the image. Toward the right of
center, against the black background of space, you can see a bright
group of stars called "Stock 8." The light from this cluster carves out a
bowl in the nearby dust clouds, seen in the imageas green fluff. Along
the sinuous tail in the center, and to the left, the groupings of red
point sources clumped in the green are also young stars.In the image, infrared wavelengths, which are invisible to the unaided eye, have been assigned visible colors. Light with a wavelength of 1.2 microns, detected by 2MASS, is shown in blue. The Spitzer wavelengths of 3.6 and 4.5 microns are green and red, respectively.
Spitzer data used to create the image were obtained
during the space telescope's "warm mission" phase, following its
depletion of coolant in mid-2009. Due to its design, Spitzer remains
cold enough to operate efficiently at two channels of infrared light. It
is now in its 12th year of operation since launch.
Post a Comment