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Spitzer captures cosmic mountains of creation NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: November 9, 2005 A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals billowing mountains of dust ablaze with the fires of stellar youth. Captured by Spitzer's infrared eyes, the majestic image resembles the iconic "Pillars of Creation" picture taken of the Eagle Nebula in visible light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. Both views feature star-forming clouds of cool gas and dust that have been sculpted into pillars by radiation and winds from hot, massive stars.
The largest of the pillars observed by Spitzer entombs hundreds of never-before-seen embryonic stars, and the second largest contains dozens. "We believe that the star clusters lighting up the tips of the pillars are essentially the offspring of the region's single, massive star," said Dr. Lori Allen, lead investigator of the new observations, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. "It appears that radiation and winds from the massive star triggered new stars to form."
"With Spitzer, we can not only see the stars in the pillars, but we can estimate their age and study how they formed," said Dr. Joseph Hora, a co-investigator, also from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The W5 region and the Eagle Nebula are referred to as high-mass star-forming regions. They start out as thick and turbulent clouds of gas and dust that later give birth to families of stars, some of which are more than 10 times more massive than the sun. Radiation and winds from the massive stars subsequently blast the cloudy material outward, so that only the densest pillar-shaped clumps of material remain. The process is akin to the formation of desert mesas, which are made up of dense rock that resisted water and wind erosion. According to theories of triggered star formation, the pillars eventually become dense enough to spur the birth of a second generation of stars. Those stars, in turn, might also trigger successive generations. Astronomers do not know if the sun, which formed about five billion years ago, was originally a member of this type of extended stellar family.
Luis Chavarria is also a member of the investigating team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This research was originally led by Dr. Lynne Deutsch of the Center for Astrophysics, who passed away April 2, 2004. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. JPL is a division of Caltech. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., built Spitzer's infrared array camera, which took the observations. The instrument's principal investigator is Dr. Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. |
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Return to flight space shuttle commander Eileen Collins narrates an interesting slide show featuring some favorite photographs of Earth taken during her previous shuttle missions.
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin goes before the U.S. House of Representative's Science Committee to provide an update on the moon-Mars exploration program, the future of the space shuttle and space station, possible servicing of Hubble, cost overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope and the agency's aeronautics research.
The Senate Commerce Committee holds a confirmation hearing on President Bush's nomination of Shana Dale to be the new NASA deputy administrator, replacing former astronaut Fred Gregory.
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Scientists eagerly examine suitcase-like packages, called the Materials International Space Station Experiments, or MISSEs, after return to Earth. The MISSE packages were flown outside the orbiting station to expose different materials to the space environments for study.
This 2005 Atlantic hurricane season has a been a record-breaker. Satellite imagery since June 1 has been compiled into this movie to track the 21 named storms as they formed and traveled, many making landfall.
