Seen here in visible light, the North American
Nebula strangely resembles its namesake continent.
Expanding our view to include infrared light,
the dark dust lanes and concealed stars glow
in red colors while the continental gas clouds
shift to an ocean-like blue. Pushing entirely
into the infrared spectrum, we see even more
detail in the convoluted dust clouds.
The ultraviolet glow from massive young stars
heats the gas and sculpts the dust clouds
into fantastic shapes throughout this composite
of visible and infrared light. The hot gas,
rendered in blue, fills the spaces between
the denser dusty regions that appear red.
This dramatic cluster of baby stars can only
be found in infrared images. The stars are
forming within dense dust filaments in the
“Gulf of Mexico” region. The dusty cocoons
around these protostars glow red in this expanded
infrared view.
A similar, though smaller, filament of baby
stars can be found nearby, in an area known
as the Pelican Nebula. Picking out the red
protostars is easy in the full infrared view.
Combining infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer
Space Telescope with light from other parts
of the spectrum gives astronomers a more complete
picture of star formation. Each different
combination of observations provides more
insight into how one generation of stars can
give rise to the next.
