Photo of Star-forming Cloud in Cepheus

All free photos → Free Photos of Nature → Free Photos of Stars → Photo of Star-forming Cloud in Cepheus

This is a premium free photo

This photo was viewed 1 times and was downloaded in full size 1 times.

This photo was liked 0 times

If you are a member, please login in order to see the source link of the above image.

Summaryedit

DescriptionStar-forming Cloud in Cepheus.jpg	English: This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals the complex life cycle of young stars, from their dust-shrouded beginnings to their stellar debuts. The stellar nursery was spotted in a cosmic cloud sitting 21,000 light-years away in the Cepheus constellation. A star is born when a dense patch gas and dust collapses inside a cosmic cloud. In the first million years of a star's life, it is hidden from visible-light view by the cloud that created it. Eventually as the star matures, its strong winds and radiation blow away surrounding material and the star fully reveals itself to the universe. The first stages of stellar life are represented by the greenish yellow dot located in the center of the image (just to the right of the blue dot). Astronomers suspect that this source is less than a million years old because spectra of the region (right bottom graph) reveal a deep absorption feature due to silicate dust (crushed crystalline grains that are smaller than sand) indicating that the star is still deeply embedded inside the cosmic cloud that collapsed to form it. Wisps of green surrounding the star and its nearby environment illustrate the presence of hot hydrogen gas. Above and to the left of the central greenish yellow dot, a large, bright pinkish dot reveals a more mature star on the verge of emerging from its natal cocoon. Although this star is still shrouded by its birth material, astronomers use Spitzer, a temperature-sensitive infrared telescope, to see the surrounding gas and dust that is being heated up by the star. The region's oldest and fully exposed stars can be seen as bunches of blue specks located just left of the concave ridge. Energetic particles and ultraviolet photons from nearby star clusters etched this arc into the cloud by blowing away surrounding dust and gas. Spectral observations of the ridge (right top graph) and reddish-white dot, or "mature star" (right middle graph), indicate the presence of carbon rich molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are found on barbecue grills and in automobile exhaust on Earth. The featured image is a four-channel false-color composite, where blue indicates emission at 3.6 microns, green corresponds to 4.5 microns, and red to 5.8 and 8.0 microns. The image was taken by Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC). Spectra of the region were obtained with the telescope's Infrared Spectrometer (IRS) instrument.
Date	8 September 2006
Source	https://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/2234-sig06-021-Story-of-Stellar-Birth
Author	NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Carey and J. Ingalls (SSC/Caltech)

Image use policy: https://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/info/18-Image-Use-Policy

Licensingedit

This file is in the public domain because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)

Warnings:

Use of NASA logos, insignia and emblems are restricted per US law 14 CFR 1221.
The NASA website hosts a large number of images from the Soviet/Russian space agency, and other non-American space agencies. These are not necessarily in the public domain.
Materials based on Hubble Space Telescope data may be copyrighted if they are not explicitly produced by the STScI.[1] See also {{PD-Hubble}} and {{Cc-Hubble}}.
The SOHO (ESA & NASA) joint project implies that all materials created by its probe are copyrighted and require permission for commercial non-educational use. [2]
Images featured on the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) web site may be copyrighted. [3]

Photo's description:

This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals the complex life cycle of young stars, from their dust-shrouded beginnings to their stellar debuts. The stellar nursery was spotted in a cosmic cloud sitting 21,000 light-years away in the Cepheus constellation. A star is born when a dense patch gas and dust collapses inside a cosmic cloud. In the first million years of a star's life, it is hidden from visible-light view by the cloud that created it. Eventually as the star matures, its strong winds and radiation blow away surrounding material and the star fully reveals itself to the universe. The first stages of stellar life are represented by the greenish yellow dot located in the center of the image (just to the right of the blue dot). Astronomers suspect that this source is less than a million years old because spectra of the region (right bottom graph) reveal a deep absorption feature due to silicate dust (crushed crystalline grains that are smaller than sand) indicating that the star is still deeply embedded inside the cosmic cloud that collapsed to form it. Wisps of green surrounding the star and its nearby environment illustrate the presence of hot hydrogen gas. Above and to the left of the central greenish yellow dot, a large, bright pinkish dot reveals a more mature star on the verge of emerging from its natal cocoon. Although this star is still shrouded by its birth material, astronomers use Spitzer, a temperature-sensitive infrared telescope, to see the surrounding gas and dust that is being heated up by the star. The region's oldest and fully exposed stars can be seen as bunches of blue specks located just left of the concave ridge. Energetic particles and ultraviolet photons from nearby star clusters etched this arc into the cloud by blowing away surrounding dust and gas. Spectral observations of the ridge (right top graph) and reddish-white dot, or "mature star" (right middle graph), indicate the presence of carbon rich molecules called polycyclic

Licensing:
Public Domain

Only registered users can post comments. Please login.

EXIF data:
File name	star-forming_cloud_in_cepheus.jpg
Size, Mbytes	3.36823828125
Mime type	image/jpeg
Orientation of image	1
Image resolution in width direction	300
Image resolution in height direction	300
Unit of X and Y resolution	2
Color space information	65535
Exif image width	3000
Exif image length	2400
Software used	Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
Copyright holder	0

The images at Free-Photos.biz come mainly from Wikimedia Commons or from our own production. The photos are either in the public domain, or licensed under free linceses: Free-Photos.biz license, GPL, Creative Commons or Free-Art license. Some very few other photos where uploaded to Free-Photos.biz by our users and released into the public domain or into free usage under another free license (like GPL etc.)

While the copyright and licensing information supplied for each photo is believed to be accurate, Free-Photos.biz does not provide any warranty regarding the copyright status or correctness of licensing terms. If you decide to reuse the images from Free-Photos.biz, you should verify the copyright status of each image just as you would when obtaining images from other sources.

The use of depictions of living or deceased persons may be restricted in some jurisdictions by laws regarding personality rights. Such images are exhibited at Free-Photos.biz as works of art that serve higher artistic interests.

PRIVACY POLICY

By registering your account and/or by subscribing to new and newly rated photographs you agree we may send you the links to photos and we may occasionally share other information with you.

We do NOT disclose your personal data.

Subscribe for free!

This is a premium free photo

Summaryedit

Licensingedit

PRIVACY POLICY