Cosmic Buds

NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

Flower-shaped neb­ula abound in the cos­mos. This churn­ing bud blos­soms with new stars in a new infrared image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Sur­vey Explorer. The stars, called the Berke­ley 5 clus­ter, show as blue dots to the right of the image. They shine in the cloud from which they formed only about a mil­lion years ago.

Explore the image from WISE. From the Berke­ley 59 clus­ter, notice the red glow sur­round­ing the hot, new stars. This warm dust is the basis for the stars’ for­ma­tion. A green ‘leafy’ neb­u­los­ity wraps the clus­ter show­ing the edge of this starry cocoon. The cloud glows green from the pres­ence of heated poly­cyclic aro­matic hydro­car­bons, or PAHs. PAHs are mol­e­cules left over from com­bus­tion and we find these mol­e­cules on Earth in exhaust pipes and bar­be­cue pits. Search the cloud for red blobs of light. These are second-generation stars form­ing near the edge of the cloud. The hot, blue stars in the cen­ter send out an intense solar wind, carv­ing a hol­low area within the cloud. As the gas and dust slam into the qui­eter space near the edges, it com­presses, pro­vid­ing fuel for new stars. The cloud even con­tains a super­nova rem­nant, NGC 7822. The mas­sive star exploded, blast­ing the cloud open and leav­ing behind the flo­ral look we now see. The hot, blue stars mak­ing up the Berke­ley 5 clus­ter will likely explode as super­novae as well; in a few mil­lion years. The blue stars sprin­kled through­out the image are fore­ground stars.

Berke­ley 5 and NGC 7822 lie about 3,000 light-years from Earth toward the north­ern con­stel­la­tion Cepheus, the King.