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Spitzer Captures Cosmic Mountains of Creation

The majestic image featuring star-forming clouds of cool gas and dust that have been sculpted into pillars by radiation and winds from hot, massive stars was aptured by Spitzer infrared telescope.

The Spitzer image, which can be found at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media, shows the eastern edge of a region known as W5, in the Cassiopeia constellation 7,000 light-years away. This region is dominated by a single massive star, whose location outside the pictured area is "pointed out" by the finger-like pillars. The pillars themselves are colossal, together resembling a mountain range. They are more than 10 times the size of those in the Eagle Nebula.

The largest of the pillars observed by Spitzer entombs hundreds of never-before-seen embryonic stars, and the second largest contains dozens.

Spitzer was able to see the stars forming inside the pillars thanks to its infrared vision. Visible-light images of this same region show dark towers outlined by halos of light. The stars inside are cloaked by walls of dust. But infrared light coming from these stars can escape through the dust, providing astronomers with a new view.

The W5 region and the Eagle Nebula are referred to as high-mass star-forming regions. They start out as thick and turbulent clouds of gas and dust that later give birth to families of stars, some of which are more than 10 times more massive than the sun. Radiation and winds from the massive stars subsequently blast the cloudy material outward, so that only the densest pillar-shaped clumps of material remain. The process is akin to the formation of desert mesas, which are made up of dense rock that resisted water and wind erosion.

According to theories of triggered star formation, the pillars eventually become dense enough to spur the birth of a second generation of stars. Those stars, in turn, might also trigger successive generations. Astronomers do not know if the sun, which formed about five billion years ago, was originally a member of this type of extended stellar family.

posted by: kyawoo at 11:08 | link | comments |
astronomy

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