A large celestial mosaic from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows multiple clusters of stars and clouds of gas and dust in the constellation of Cepheus.
This Spitzer image shows the Cepheus C and Cepheus B regions. The image was compiled using data from Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS). The colors correspond with IRAC wavelengths of 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (cyan) and 8 microns (green), and 24 microns (red) from the MIPS instrument. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
On the left side of the Spitzer image, a dark filament runs horizontally through the green cloud. A smattering of infant stars (the red and yellow dots) appear inside it.
Known as Cepheus C, the area is a particularly dense concentration of gas and dust where infant stars form.
The dark vein of material will eventually be dispersed by strong winds produced as the stars get older.
This will create an illuminated puffed-up region that will look similar to the bright red-and-white region on the large nebula’s upper-right side.
The region is called Cepheus C because it lies in the constellation Cepheus. It is about 6 light-years long and lies about 40 light-years from the bright spot at the tip of the nebula.
A second large nebula can be seen on the right side of the image, with a star cluster located just above it.
Known as Cepheus B, the cluster sits within a few thousand light-years of our Sun.
A study of this region found that the dramatic collection is about 4 million to 5 million years old — slightly older than those in Cepheus C.
In that way, the mosaic is a veritable family portrait, featuring infants, parents and grandparents of star-forming regions.
Stars form in dense clouds of material, like the dark vein that makes up Cepheus C. As the stars grow, they produce winds that blow the gas and dust outward, to form beautiful, illuminated nebulas like the bright white spot at the top of the larger nebula.
Finally, the dust and gas disperse, and the star clusters stand alone in space, as with Cepheus B.
An annotated mosaic of the Cepheus C and Cepheus B regions. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
A massive star called V374 Cep is located just below Cepheus C.
Astronomers studying this star have speculated that it might be surrounded by a nearly edge-on disk of dark, dusty material. The dark cones extending to the right and left of the star are a shadow of that disk.
The smaller nebula on the right side of the image includes two particularly interesting objects.
In the upper-left portion of the nebula, try to find a blue star crowned by a small, red arc of light. This ‘runaway star’ is plowing through the gas and dust at a rapid clip, creating a shock wave, or ‘bow shock,’ in front of itself.
Also hidden within this second nebula, a small cluster of newborn stars illuminates the dense cloud of gas and dust where they formed.
