New Hotspot Identified For Star Birth (big space pic)
by ELIZABETH HOWELL
A nebula named after a cats paw may be a stealthy spot for a lot of star birth. New observations of NGC 6334 revealed fainter stars than ever before seen, leading astronomers to believe there could be many star babies within the nebula.
You can see the results in the false-color picture above: red for new observations with the National Optical Astronomy Observatorys Extremely Wide-Field Infrared Imager (NEWFIRM), green for the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope and red for the Herschel Space Telescope that recently ended its mission.
The observations acquired with NEWFIRM allowed us to identify and separate out the large number of contaminating sources, including background galaxies and cool stellar giants in the galactic plane to obtain a more complete census of the newly-formed stars, stated Lori Allen, an NOAO team member.
Read more:
http://www.universetoday.com/102617/new-hotspot-identified-for-star-birth/