Gallery | Cosmic Valentines | The heart is WISE
As promised, here is another image of the W5 star-forming region (as seen by Spitzer in the earlier shot), this time taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). This mission scanned the entire sky in the infrared, looking at galaxies, asteroids, cool stars, and yes, clouds of gas and dust.
The colors tell you a bit about what you're looking at: blue and cyan are from hotter sources like stars, while green and red are from warm dust. In fact, the green is coming mostly from long-chain organic molecules called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons: smelly soot!
Well, you know what they say: love stinks.
Higher res version.
Original release.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
The colors tell you a bit about what you're looking at: blue and cyan are from hotter sources like stars, while green and red are from warm dust. In fact, the green is coming mostly from long-chain organic molecules called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons: smelly soot!
Well, you know what they say: love stinks.
Higher res version.
Original release.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
