A giant maw

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Rebull (SSC/Caltech)

A giant maw full of stars opens up in this image of the North Amer­i­can Neb­ula from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Explore this amaz­ing image from the orbit­ing infrared tele­scope. Leave a com­ment below telling us what images and sto­ries you see in the star clouds of the North Amer­i­can Nebula.

North Amer­i­can Neb­ula in vis­i­ble light (DSS/D. De Martin)

The view changes dra­mat­i­cally as Spitzer’s infrared sen­sors pick up the warm glow within the dust. Astronomers begin to see through the dark clouds pick­ing out the glow of baby stars held within their dusty cocoons. Explore the fil­a­ments warm gas and dust. Near the top, a sear­ing ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion from a hot star causes an arc of gas to glow red.

The DSS image inset above rep­re­sents the true col­ors of the neb­ula. Color in the Spitzer image are cre­ated by astronomers. Each color shows a dif­fer­ent tem­per­a­ture range of the gas allow­ing sci­en­tists to study dif­fer­ent parts of the nebula.

The North Amer­i­can Neb­ula, also known as NGC 7000, lies fairly close, only about 2,000 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Cygnus the Swan.

Comments

SK 24-02-2011, 09:31

The giant space amoeba in the lower left is breath­ing fire into the universe!

Steve 29-04-2011, 11:53

The neb­ula looks peace­ful and serene in vis­i­ble light but angry and tumul­tuous in the infrared.

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