Beastly Stars and a Bubble

A star-forming region called BG2107+49 shines from the considerable distance of more than 30,000 light-years away in the upper left of this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. With Spitzer's resolution and sensitivity, however, astronomers can "zoom in" on the action of star birth unfolding there, where behemoth stars ten to twenty times the mass of our sun are taking shape. To the right looms an expanding bubble of star formation likely triggered by powerful stellar winds blown from an earlier generation of stars that arose in the ring's center. The smattering of little red dots in the area and elsewhere are young forming stars still cocooned in gas and dust.

This image is a combination of data from Spitzer and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). The Spitzer data was taken after Spitzer's liquid coolant ran dry in May 2009, marking the beginning of its "warm" mission. Light from Spitzer's remaining infrared channels at 3.6 and 4.5 microns has been represented in green and red, respectively. 2MASS observations at 2.2 microns are blue.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/2MASS/SSI/University of Wisconsin

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/spitzer-C20100728.html