Image Gallery >
Astronomical Images >
Star Formation >
sig07-014
|
| NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Allen (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) & Gould's Belt Legacy Team |
Stellar Families
Human families may be bonded by blood, but stellar families are united by gravity. A family of stars, or star cluster, can contain hundreds or thousands of members. In this image, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope spots the Serpens South star cluster, which consists of a relatively dense group of 50 young stars -- 35 of which are protostars, or stellar infants, that are just beginning to form.
Stellar members of Serpens South star cluster can be seen as the green, yellow, and orange tinted specks sitting atop the black dust lane running down the center of the image. Like raindrops, stars form when thick patches of cosmic clouds condense.
Tints of green in the image represent hot hydrogen gas excited when high-speed jets of gas ejected by infant stars collide with the cool gas in the surrounding cloud.
Wisps of red in the background are organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are being excited by stellar radiation from a neighboring star-forming region located to the east of this image, called W40. On Earth PAHs are found on charred barbeque grills and in the sooty automobile exhaust.
This Spitzer picture is composed of three images taken with the telescope's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) at 3.6 (blue), 4.5 (green), and 5.8 (red) microns.
To download, choose your preferred resolution and file format below.
"High-Resolution" files will always be the highest resolution and widest
crop available, intended for print. Other resolutions are provided for
convenient on-screen viewing.
Screen-Resolution (315x450) :
JPEG
(176 KB)
Medium-Resolution (630x900) :
JPEG
(520 KB)
High-Resolution (1410x2014) :
JPEG
(2.3 MB)
|
Mac TIFF
(5 MB)
| PC TIFF (5 MB)
| About the Object (1) | | Object name: | Serpens South | | Object type: | Star Cluster | | Position (J2000): | RA: 18h 30m 5.00s Dec: -2° 2' 30.00" | | Distance: | 260 pc (848 light-years) | | Constellation: | Serpens |
|
About the Data
|
|
Spitzer Data
|
| Image Credit: | NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Allen (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) & Gould's Belt Legacy Team | | Instrument: | IRAC | | Wavelength: | 3.6 (blue), 4.5 (green), 8.0 (red) | | Exposure Date: | 2006/10/27 | | Exposure Time: | 40.8 sec | | Image scale: | 14.4 x 20.3 arcminutes (3.5 x 5 light-years) | | Orientation: | North is up | | Release Date: | 2007/08/08 |
|
Observers
|
Lori Allen, Principal Investigator (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
Robert Gutermuth (CfA)
Tyler Bourke (CfA)
Tracy Huard (CfA)
Brenda Matthews (Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics)
Jes Jørgensen (University of Bonn)
Dave Nutter (Cardiff University)
Tim Brooke (Spitzer Science Center)
James Di Francesco (Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics)
Neal Evans (University of Texas - Austin)
Jane Greaves (University of St. Andrews)
Paul Harvey (University of Texas - Austin)
Jenny Hatchell (University of Exeter)
Michiel Hogerheijde (Leiden University)
Doug Johnstone (Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics)
Jason Kirk (Cardiff University)
Lewis Knee (Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics)
David Koerner (Northern Arizona University)
Tom Megeath (University of Toledo)
Bruno Merin (ESA)
Lee Mundy (University of Maryland)
Philip Myers (CfA)
Deborah Padgett (Spitzer Science Center)
Luisa Rebull (Spitzer Science Center)
Karl Stapelfeldt (JPL)
Derek Ward-Thompson (Cardiff University)
Jeremy Yates (University College London)
|
|
