NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured this view of a nebula called Henize
206, which resides 163,000 light-years away in a nearby galaxy called the Large
Magellanic Cloud. The region of gas and dust is loaded with newborn stars.
The photograph was released yesterday.
The nebula contains hundreds and possibly thousands of stars, ranging in age
from 2 million to 10 million years old, astronomers said. The star nursery was
created when a massive star exploded in a supernova, sending shock waves into
the surrounding material and compressing it, triggering some of the gas and
dust to form knots and collapse into new stars.
"The image is a wonderful example of the cycle of birth and death that gives
rise to stars throughout the universe," said Dr. Varoujan Gorjian, a scientist
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and principal investigator
for the latest observation.
By imaging Henize 206 in the infrared, Spitzer was able to see through blankets
of dust that dominate visible light views. The resulting false-color image --
astronomers apply visible light colors in a logical pattern by shifting the
infrared light wavelength measurements as a group -- shows embedded young stars
as bright white spots. Gas and dust is blue, green and red.
Henize 206 was first catalogued in the early 1950s by Dr. Karl Henize (pronounced
Hen-eyes), an astronomer who became a NASA astronaut. He flew aboard the Challenger
Space Shuttle in 1985. He died in 1993 at age 66 while climbing Mount Everest.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/V. Gorjian (JPL)
