A Wispy “OK”

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/2MASS/B. Whit­ney (SSI/University of Wisconsin)

A wispy neb­ula forms an “OK” sign in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Tele­scope.

Explore the vast struc­ture called CTB 102 deep in the heart of the con­stel­la­tion of Perseus. Leave a note below and tell us the sto­ries and shapes you see in this image. A group of newly formed, big stars has blown a small bub­ble in the cen­ter of the image. Through­out the image, gaps in the star cloud show evi­dence for past bub­bles. These empty spaces are cre­ated after stars form. Once new stars begin to shine with their own light, they send a tor­rent of solar wind out in all direc­tions. This wind pushes away the gas and dust and shapes the star cloud from which the star was born.

Spitzer sees the uni­verse in infrared light. With the aid of the space-based tele­scope, sci­en­tists can peer into cold clouds of gas and dust and see warm objects that might be the begin­ning of stars.

Zoom into the largest hole and look for a ten­dril of gas and dust. Star mate­r­ial gets pushed together mak­ing columns and pil­lars sim­i­lar to those found in the Eagle Neb­ula. They become nurs­eries for new stars. To the right in the image, look for a star clus­ter. The stars in this sparkling clus­ter formed at about the same time. They too have blown a bub­ble in this cos­mic cloud.