WISE Admires Aromatic Cosmic Rosebud : BIG PIC
-
March 16, 2010 -- This beautiful cosmic rosebud shows the infrared emissions being generated by a group of young stars (the blue dots to the right of image center) only a few million years old emerging from the cloud they used as their stellar nursery. The red glow (resembling the petals of a rose) is the heated dust that remains behind.
Since its launch in December 2009, NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has been slowly scanning the cosmos, picking out objects that are invisible to optical telescopes. This time, WISE has captured this star-forming region in its lens: the Berkeley 59 cluster in the constellation Cepheus, approximately 3,300 light-years from Earth.
Surrounding the red "petals" is another cloud (the green glow). This nebulocity contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (or PAH) molecules. Despite its 'aromatic' name, you're more likely to find PAHs as the burnt gunk stuck to the underside of your barbecue than inside any scented flower.
PAHs are a toxic byproduct of burnt fuel, but when they are detected in nebulae, this material indicates that stars were born nearby. Interestingly, PAHs are also hypothesized to be the building blocks of the most basic forms of life.
Dotted throughout the green haze are some second generation stars glowing red. It is thought that the young stars in the center of the cluster have compressed the gas and dust with their powerful stellar winds to kick-start the birth of more stars. There is also a supernova remnant (called NGC 7822) associated with this region, an explosion that gave this rosebud its bulbous shape.
-- Ian O'Neill, Discovery News.
Image credit: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team.
-
our sites
-
video
-
shop
-
stay connected
-
corporate
comments ( )