The Serpent - Star Forming Cloud
by Jennifer Rondinelli Reilly - Fine Art Photography
Title
The Serpent - Star Forming Cloud
Artist
Jennifer Rondinelli Reilly - Fine Art Photography
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
Within the swaddling dust of the Serpents Cloud Core, astronomers are studying one of the youngest collections of stars ever seen in our galaxy. This infrared image combines data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope with shorter-wavelength observations from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), letting us peer into the clouds of dust wrapped around this stellar nursery.
At a distance of around 750 light-years, these young stars reside within the confines of the constellation Serpens, or the “Serpent.” This collection contains stars of only relatively low to moderate mass, lacking any of the massive and incredibly bright stars found in larger star-forming regions like the Orion nebula. Our sun is a star of moderate mass. Whether it formed in a low-mass stellar region like Serpens, or a high-mass stellar region like Orion, is an ongoing mystery.
The stellar “hatchlings” in the Serpens Cloud Core represent the very youngest stages of stellar development. They appear as red, orange and yellow points clustered near the center of the image. Other red features include jets of material ejected from these young stars. Some mature stars that are not in the nebula appear yellowish due to dust obscuring our view at shorter, bluer wavelengths.
This region also includes a population of prenatal stars that are so deeply enshrouded in their dusty cocoons to be completely hidden in this view. They only become detectable at much longer wavelengths of light.
I have given this high resolution deep space Spitzer photograph a special fine art treatment that turns an ordinary telescope image into a breathtaking, high quality, fine art photograph.
Uploaded
December 13th, 2014
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