Poster Version
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.
Rho Oph is a complex made up of a large main cloud of molecular hydrogen,
a key molecule allowing new stars to form from 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.
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. Blue
represents 3.6-micron light; green shows light of 8 microns; and red is
24-micron light. The multiple wavelengths reveal different aspects of the
dust surrounding and between the embedded stars, yielding information
about the stars and their birthplace.
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 which is glowing in infrared light due to the heating of dust by
bright young stars near the right edge of the cloud. 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. Although infrared
radiation at 24 microns pierces through dust easily, this dark filament is
incredibly opaque, appearing dark even at the longest wavelengths in the
image.
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
http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer.