Spitzer Sheds Light on Colony of Baby Stars

Discovery.com ^ | 04/01/10 | Ian O'Neill

[KevinDavis]

Deep inside the famous Orion Nebula, a colony of very young stars have been imaged by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Although the observatory ran out of liquid helium coolant in May 2009, two modules inside its Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) remain fully operational, capturing wonderfully detailed pictures of Orion's star-forming region currently exploding with stellar life.

[KevinDavis]

I hope one those contain planets for our new home..

[KevinDavis]

For other space news go to: http://www.spacetoday.net
For a list of Private Space Companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies

[Gay State Conservative]

Geeze...for a minute I thought this was a story about Elliot Spitzer having developed an “interest” in Hollywood child stars.

[cripplecreek]

LOL my first thought was also of Elliot Spitzer. I thought it had been discovered that he had a litter of love children.

[mkjessup]

Speak of the devil...

[Chode]

[onedoug]

Within 1300ly of us these should be similarly metal enriched stars, possibly 2nd or 3rd generation, thus capable of sustaining at least microbial life in their albeit somewhat distant futures. And if one or more of them is a G2V system, God knows, maybe technological life might have a chance therein, given how the galaxy evolves over the next several billion years.

[John-Irish]

Well if they do it’s going to take a very long, long time to get there. The Orion Nebula is home to the ‘’Trapezium’’, a cluster of four very bright, white-hot stars at the center. I’ve seen loads of time from my backyard.

[El Sordo]

Pretty durn neat.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks KevinDavis.

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[wastedyears]

White hot... not white dwarves I figure. But blue shift?

[John-Irish]

You mean Red Shift?

[wastedyears]

I remember blue shift being hotter and larger stars. Red would be more towards the middle of the life cycle.

[John-Irish]

As I understand it(and I’m a rank amatuer) the closer a star to us, the hotter and newer it is and yes, I believe the farther away and older then you have a ‘’’red shift’’. Anyhoo, I haven’t had my telescope out in a while and I’m p!ssed because Mars was so close to the Earth this and won’t be back till 2012. ( a sign from the heavens, like Obama’s going to be done in by Mars, the God of War?)