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.
