The Spitzer
Space Telescope has taken an unprecedented look at the wispy Orion nebula
to find a cornucopia of stars and dust with the recipe build planets.
Spitzer's infrared
eye found some 2,300 disks of planet-forming material that were either too
small or distant to be seen by most traditional telescopes scanning Orion in
the visible
range of the spectrum.
"When I
first got a look at the
image, I was immediately struck by the intricate structure in the
nebulosity, and in particular, the billowing clouds of the gigantic ring
extending from the Orion nebula," said astronomer Tom Megeath,
of the University
of Toledo, in a
statement.
Megeath,
who led the Spitzer research at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics (CfA), and his colleagues combined about 10,000 images taken
by the space-based telescope's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) to build their
comprehensive look at the 30 light-year wide Orion nebula.
The image
also features about 200 baby stars too young to develop disks of their own. Interstellar
dust swirls through Spitzer's view, painting the swath of sky in a vivid pink.
Launched
in August 2003 as the Space Infrared Telescope (SIRTF), Spitzer was rechristened
in honor of the late scientist Lyman Spitzer, Jr., who first suggested placing
telescopes in orbit to escape interference from the Earth's atmosphere in the
1940s.
Perched in
the sword of the easily recognizable constellation
Orion and backlit by four bright stars known as the
Trapezium, the Orion nebula is one of the most observed deep-sky objects. The
nebula sits about 1,450 light-years from Earth and is the nearest stellar
factory to our home planet, making it a convenient laboratory for star
evolution researchers.
"Most stars
form in crowded environments like Orion, so if we want to understand how [they]
form, we need to understand the Orion nebula star cluster," said CfA researcher Lori Allen, who is working with Megeath on a long-term study of the nebula.
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