Short Sharp Science - Spitzer peers through the dust into star nursery

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences and space reporter
 
(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Havard-Smithsonian CfA)

This churning cloud of dust and gas marks one of the richest regions of star formation in the Milky Way. The region, dubbed Cygnus X for its location in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan), is the birthplace of the largest population of massive stars in a 6500-light-year radius. It's also a graveyard for newborn stars whose formation was prematurely halted by their hostile environment.

Cygnus X is home to thousands of young, restless O-type stars. These are the brightest, hottest, most massive types of stars - and they also have the shortest lives. Their hot radiation and powerful stellar winds carve bubbles and pillars out of the clouds of gas and dust in which they formed.

Those winds can trigger cascades of star formation elsewhere in the cloud, as material clumps up, falls together under its own gravity and eventually ignites. But the winds can also strip life-giving gas away from infant stars, suddenly stopping their growth.

The beautiful clouds in this image are normally invisible or blocked by opaque dust. But NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, operated by the California Institute of Technology, has infrared eyes. It can peer through the dust to reveal the cloud's intricate structures.

Most stars are thought to form in similar swirling cauldrons. Over time, the stars that survive the volatility of their early years seek out a slower pace of life away from the dense nurseries where they were born. 

http://www.newscientist.com/