The Southern Crown constellation is home to one of the most special star-forming regions, the Coronet Cluster. This beautiful photo is the space photo of the week.
The Coronet cluster is one of the closest star-forming regions. The cluster is 420 light-years from the Solar System, about a third the distance to the most famous star-forming region, the Orion Nebula. The constellation Zuiderkroon is not clearly visible from the Benelux. To observe the Coronet cluster with a telescope you still have to travel south.
In visible light, the young stars in the Coronet cluster are invisible. This is because these very young Crown Jewels are hiding in the dark mist. The constellations only appear in infrared light. Fortunately, the Spitzer telescope is equipped with an infrared camera to view these embryonic stars.
Spitzer is designed to study “the cold,” “the old,” and “the dusty,” three things astronomers can observe particularly well in infrared light. That’s right. Visible light is between 400 and 700 nanometers. Wavelengths longer than 700 nanometers, but shorter than microwaves (1mm to 30cm) are referred to as infrared; invisible to the human eye. Different infrared wavelengths can reveal different features of the universe. For example, Spitzer can see objects that — because they are too cold — don’t emit much visible light, including exoplanets, brown dwarf stars and cold matter that resides in the space between stars. One of Spitzer’s main strengths is his sensitivity. That is, it is able to detect very weak infrared light sources.
The space photo of the week is a composite image and shows the Coronet Cluster in X-ray light (Chandra X-ray Observatory) and in infrared light (Spitzer). The photo was taken in 2007. What is special about the photo is that the different stars in the nebula are not all the same age. This gives astronomers a good idea of how young stars form and evolve.
Spitzer has since retired. During his sixteen years of existence, Spitzer has done a lot of work. For example, he has taken many beautiful pictures of distant galaxies and nearby nebulae. The light from some of them has traveled billions of years to reach us, allowing scientists to see objects as they existed long, long ago. In addition, the space telescope has made a number of special discoveries. For example, it was Spitzer who discovered the largest ring around Saturn. The telescope was also the first to detect light from a planet outside our solar system, made the first weather map of an exoplanet (see image below), found the largest molecules (so-called buckyballs), found new protostars (ie stars in the making) and black holes.
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Image at the top of this article: NASA