In the southern skies lies the constellation of Serpens, the Serpent. It’s a big constellation, covering quite a bit of sky, so you’d expect there to be interesting objects in it. Not only that, it covers territory that includes a thick part of the Milky Way’s disk, where we see lots of goings-on, including stars that are born, stars that die, stellar nurseries, and more.
In fact, Serpens has in its borders one of the nearest factories in the sky that is churning out stars. It’s located very roughly 1000 light years away, close enough for us to study it in detail. The problem is, the place is so littered with thick dust — and young stars are enshrouded in it after they are born — that it’s impossible to get good visible light images of the infant stars there.
Enter Spitzer Space Telescope. It sees infrared light, which pierces the dust. Young stars are also bright in the infrared, making them perfect targets for Spitzer. Like so:
This spectacular image shows young, bright stars pouring out infrared– stars which are essentially invisible in optical images. In this false color image, hot hydrogen gas shows up as green, and you can see it formed into sheets and blobs; the stars emit gas in beams which slam into the surrounding cooler gas. The overall red/pink glow is due to what are called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. You might call it soot. They really are long-chain organic molecules that are extremely dark, but are copiously produced near young stars and emit infrared when warmed.
Astronomers weren’t sure if this little cluster was forming on its own, or was part of the overall Serpens star forming region, but follow-up observations using even longer wavelengths (submillimeter, basically short-wave radio) indicated the gas was associated with the gas in the star-forming region as a whole. So this little family is part of the bigger clan of stars being born there.
Isn’t it nice when we can get a beautiful family portrait like this one?
August 8th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Serpent my bum! This looks just like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever! I suppose a little interpretation is required either way…
August 8th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Is this in Cauda or Caput?
August 9th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Andy, I’m not sure. I don’t think they published a paper yet; I looked around but didn’t see any on the archive servers about this particular observation.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:14 am
The photo was taken in the Serpens Cauda / Aquila border region, according to Dr. Lori Allen.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Ah, thanks Christine! You would be able to find out, I suppose.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:14 am
It is mentioned that the new stars emit gases in “beams” and I am having a hard time visualizing this.
Could you perhaps tweak the analogy? Beams to me mean the gases are coming out in spots and not uniformly.
If there are PAHs, there must be a carbon-rich environment. It the carbon coming from the young stars, too? Is it formed by fusion in the stars or was it in the material that accreted to form them in the first place?
August 9th, 2007 at 11:27 am
As I understand the physics, charged particles can be emitted from the polar regions of the stars magnetic fields, forming the aforementioned “beams” but they’re not generally observable unless the beams interact with a gas cloud.
GAry 7
August 9th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
As I finished reading this and went up to the top to click on the next article an ad – 5 free movies with the purchase of a Toshiba……. – is now over the top of the click on the next article!!! GRRRRRR……. this is more than frustrating…..
August 9th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Posting a comment got rid of it……
August 9th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Thanks, Gary, it’s a bit clearer now.
IR radiation is basically heat so the collisions of the particles coming from the star with cooler gas must generate heat/IR which gets thru the dust better than visible or UV. And this is heat as opposed to radiation coming from changes in electron orbitals?
Tommy in BR