May 31st 05, 06:57 PM
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Whitney Clavin (818) 648-9734
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Image Advisory: 2005-087 May 31, 2005
Spitzer Captures Fruits Of Massive Stars' Labors
The saga of how a few monstrous stars spawned a diverse
community of additional stars is told in a new image from
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
The striking picture reveals an eclectic mix of embryonic
stars living in the tattered neighborhood of one of the
most famous massive stars in our Milky Way galaxy, Eta
Carinae. Astronomers say that radiation and winds from Eta
Carinae and its massive siblings ripped apart the
surrounding cloud of gas and dust, shocking the new stars
into being.
"We knew that stars were forming in this region before, but
Spitzer has shown us that the whole environment is swarming
with embryonic stars of an unprecedented multitude of
different masses and ages," said Dr. Robert Gehrz,
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, a member of the team
that made the Spitzer observations.
The results were presented yesterday at the 206th meeting
of the American Astronomical Society in Minneapolis by Dr.
Nathan Smith, lead investigator of the Spitzer findings,
University of Colorado, Boulder.
Previous visible-light images of this region, called the
Carina Nebula, show cloudy finger-like pillars of dust, all
pointing toward Eta Carinae at the center. Spitzer's
infrared eyes cut through much of this dust to expose
incubating stars embedded inside the pillars, as well as
new star-studded pillars never before seen.
Eta Carinae, located 10,000 light-years from Earth, was
once the second brightest star in the sky. It is so
massive, more than 100 times the mass of our Sun, it can
barely hold itself together. Over the years, it has
brightened and faded as material has shot away from its
surface. Some astronomers think Eta Carinae might die in a
supernova blast within our lifetime.
Eta Carinae's home, the Carina Nebula, is also quite big,
stretching across 200 light-years of space. This colossal
cloud of gas and dust not only gave birth to Eta Carinae,
but also to a handful of slightly less massive sibling
stars. When massive stars like these are born, they rapidly
begin to shred to pieces the very cloud that nurtured them,
forcing gas and dust to clump together and collapse into
new stars. The process continues to spread outward,
triggering successive generations of fewer and fewer stars.
Our own Sun may have grown up in a similar environment.
The new Spitzer image offers astronomers a detailed "family
tree" of the Carina Nebula. At the top of the hierarchy are
the grandparents, Eta Carinae and its siblings, and below
them are the generations of progeny of different sizes and
ages.
"Now we have a controlled experiment for understanding how
one giant gas and dust cloud can produce such a wide
variety of stars," said Gehrz.
The false colors in the Spitzer picture correspond to
different infrared wavelengths. Red represents dust
features and green shows hot gas. Embryonic stars are
yellow or white and foreground stars are blue. Eta Carinae
itself lies just off the top of image. It is too bright for
infrared telescopes to observe.
The new image is available online at:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2005-
12/ssc2005-12a.shtml .
JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations
are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. JPL is a
division of Caltech. Spitzer's infrared array camera, which
took the picture of the Carina Nebula, was built by NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; its
development was led by Dr. Giovanni Fazio, Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass.
Additional information about the Spitzer Space Telescope is
available at:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer .
-end-
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Whitney Clavin (818) 648-9734
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Image Advisory: 2005-087 May 31, 2005
Spitzer Captures Fruits Of Massive Stars' Labors
The saga of how a few monstrous stars spawned a diverse
community of additional stars is told in a new image from
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
The striking picture reveals an eclectic mix of embryonic
stars living in the tattered neighborhood of one of the
most famous massive stars in our Milky Way galaxy, Eta
Carinae. Astronomers say that radiation and winds from Eta
Carinae and its massive siblings ripped apart the
surrounding cloud of gas and dust, shocking the new stars
into being.
"We knew that stars were forming in this region before, but
Spitzer has shown us that the whole environment is swarming
with embryonic stars of an unprecedented multitude of
different masses and ages," said Dr. Robert Gehrz,
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, a member of the team
that made the Spitzer observations.
The results were presented yesterday at the 206th meeting
of the American Astronomical Society in Minneapolis by Dr.
Nathan Smith, lead investigator of the Spitzer findings,
University of Colorado, Boulder.
Previous visible-light images of this region, called the
Carina Nebula, show cloudy finger-like pillars of dust, all
pointing toward Eta Carinae at the center. Spitzer's
infrared eyes cut through much of this dust to expose
incubating stars embedded inside the pillars, as well as
new star-studded pillars never before seen.
Eta Carinae, located 10,000 light-years from Earth, was
once the second brightest star in the sky. It is so
massive, more than 100 times the mass of our Sun, it can
barely hold itself together. Over the years, it has
brightened and faded as material has shot away from its
surface. Some astronomers think Eta Carinae might die in a
supernova blast within our lifetime.
Eta Carinae's home, the Carina Nebula, is also quite big,
stretching across 200 light-years of space. This colossal
cloud of gas and dust not only gave birth to Eta Carinae,
but also to a handful of slightly less massive sibling
stars. When massive stars like these are born, they rapidly
begin to shred to pieces the very cloud that nurtured them,
forcing gas and dust to clump together and collapse into
new stars. The process continues to spread outward,
triggering successive generations of fewer and fewer stars.
Our own Sun may have grown up in a similar environment.
The new Spitzer image offers astronomers a detailed "family
tree" of the Carina Nebula. At the top of the hierarchy are
the grandparents, Eta Carinae and its siblings, and below
them are the generations of progeny of different sizes and
ages.
"Now we have a controlled experiment for understanding how
one giant gas and dust cloud can produce such a wide
variety of stars," said Gehrz.
The false colors in the Spitzer picture correspond to
different infrared wavelengths. Red represents dust
features and green shows hot gas. Embryonic stars are
yellow or white and foreground stars are blue. Eta Carinae
itself lies just off the top of image. It is too bright for
infrared telescopes to observe.
The new image is available online at:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2005-
12/ssc2005-12a.shtml .
JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations
are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. JPL is a
division of Caltech. Spitzer's infrared array camera, which
took the picture of the Carina Nebula, was built by NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; its
development was led by Dr. Giovanni Fazio, Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass.
Additional information about the Spitzer Space Telescope is
available at:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer .
-end-