Infrared Vision Reveals Star Birth
By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
Nov. 10, 2005 — The Spitzer Space Telescope is now going where no telescope has gone before — into the dark heart of interstellar clouds where stars are being born.
A stunning new infrared-light Spitzer image shows a vast cloud of dust and gas being blasted by the stellar winds from a very massive star just outside the picture.
The blast has caused the dust and gas to blow away from the star and to collapse in some places, causing swarms of new stars to condense and burst into life inside the cloud. All this action is happening inside what's called the W5 region of the constellation Cassiopeia, some 7,000 light-years from Earth.
"In the optical (visible light), the cloud itself obscures the stars," said Spitzer investigator Joseph Hora of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Thomas Paine
"For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten."
Ecclesiastes 9:5 (KJV)
Arrr, if only the Spitzer could see into the UV...
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drachefly wrote:And if only the Chandra X-ray telescope could make my coffee... your point was...?
If the Spitzer could cover the UV as well as the IR in one continuous band, then it could probably replace the Hubble. Unfortunately, no space telescope current or planned covers the same band as Hubble. Which means we'll be missing a bunch when it finally quits. (Thanks a heap, el Shrub, for making us spend billions on a boondoggle and have no money left over for real science!)
I got this from Bill Jefferys, a (retired) professor of Astrophysics at the University of Texas. He worked on the Hubble, and would be keeping track of other missions that would cover the same territory.
/bitch and moan mode: off
Sorry about that.
Darth Wong on Strollers vs. Assholes: "There were days when I wished that my stroller had weapons on it." wilfulton on Bible genetics: "If two screaming lunatics copulate in front of another screaming lunatic, the result will be yet another screaming lunatic. " SirNitram: "The nation of France is a theory, not a fact. It should therefore be approached with an open mind, and critically debated and considered."
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