Saturday, May 19, 2012

An up-close look at star factory blazing brightly

 
The Herschel observatory sees extremely well in far-infrared wavelengths, allowing scientists to seek out and study stellar nurseries such as Cygnus-X -- places where dense clumps of gas have been gently heated by stars. In the new photo, bright white areas highlight areas where large stars have recently formed out of such clouds, researchers said. These clumps are particularly evident in the right-hand side of the image, which shows a chaotic network of filaments... In the center of the picture, intense radiation from stars undetected at Herschel's wavelengths has partly cleared and heated interstellar material, which glows blue in this representation, researchers said. The small red blobs scattered throughout the image map out the relatively cold seeds of future stars.
OpEdNews

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