A hot, young… cluster

OOooo, more pretty pictures!

The cluster is pretty close, about 400 light years away, and has many hot young stars in it (like the WB!). This image is a composite from Spitzer and Chandra: the red, green, and blue is infrared from Spitzer, and the purple is X-rays from Chandra. The hottest, youngest stars will be tinged purple; their youthful magnetic fields can heat up matter to millions of degrees, so they glow in X-rays. The diffuse purple stuff is dust scattering those X-rays.

I don’t have a lot of astronomical insight into this one, but sometimes pretty pictures are OK all by themselves.

September 14th, 2007 9:00 AM by Phil Plait in Astronomy, Cool stuff, NASA, Pretty pictures | 9 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

9 Responses to “A hot, young… cluster”

1. Dan Says:
September 14th, 2007 at 9:15 am

Why does that picture remind me of the beginning of an old Battlestar Galactica episode?
2. alfaniner Says:
September 14th, 2007 at 9:16 am

It seems almost as if the Universe were “designed”…

…solely to be used as a desktop wallpaper.
3. KaiYeves Says:
September 14th, 2007 at 9:24 am

Hmmmm… if “coronet” means crown, as I think it does, then this cluster is well named.
4. Kevin Says:
September 14th, 2007 at 9:45 am

The “WB?” Phil, you’re behind the TV times. The “WB” ceased to exist last year. It’s now “CW.”

“There are some who believe that life here, began out there….”
5. Dan Says:
September 14th, 2007 at 11:03 am

Thanks Kevin. I couldn’t quite remember the words of Count Iblee’s monologue. That dude was totally the cylon leader, by the way.

Damn… I really am a geek.
6. Donnie B. Says:
September 14th, 2007 at 12:22 pm

WB or CW… I just wish IT were 400 light-years away.
7. alfaniner Says:
September 14th, 2007 at 1:07 pm

“Thanks Kevin. I couldnâ€™t quite remember the words of Count Ibleeâ€™s monologue. That dude was totally the cylon leader, by the way.
Damnâ€¦ I really am a geek.”

???I always thought it was Wilfrid-Hyde White, one of the original council members on the pilot show??? (“Iblis”)
8. Keith Says:
September 14th, 2007 at 6:12 pm

Beauty!

I’ll have to add this to my growing collection of desktop images.

And yeah, I saw this too and thought, “Oh yeah, Battlestar Galactica…”

Wonder if they’ll use any such images as backdrops as they near Earth in season 4?
9. John Paradox Says:
September 14th, 2007 at 9:41 pm

Count Ibleeâ€™s monologue. That dude was totally the cylon leader, by the way.
???I always thought it was Wilfrid-Hyde White, one of the original council members on the pilot show??? (â€Iblisâ€)

Iblis is correct, but it was Patrick McNee (TV’s Avengers) who did the opening voice-over.

J/P=?

About Bad Astronomy

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.

Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com




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