Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Orion in the Infrared and Millimeter

This composite image of the Orion A Giant Molecular Cloud star-forming complex shows infrared emission from the WISE and MSX missions in 4 micron (red), 12 micron (blue), and 22 micron (green) emission with Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey 1.1mm emission overlaid in yellow/orange. The Orion A region is frequently featured in astronomical images:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110917.html
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120212.html
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120206.html
http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1219c/
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1209/
but its tail tends to be ignored. This quiescent region is the source of the next generation of stars, although the relatively small mass concentrations imply that no massive stars like the bright Theta 1C that powers the Orion Nebula will form.

The infrared colors show all sorts of stars including protostars. The infrared can pierce through the dust and find young stars still forming. The green and blue bands also see diffuse clouds of dust being illuminated by the central stars of the Orion nebula.
The yellow 1.1 mm dust emission shows the coldest dust that is shielded from external radiation. These cold clumps contain enough mass to form new stars...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This is a beautiful composite image! May I use this and credit you in a brief presentation on protostellar outburst research at my university? We use the WISE data pretty heavily, and this is by far the clearest, most comprehensive visual compilation of it I've been able to find so far. If you'd rather I not, of course I certainly understand!

Thank you,
Emily

Adam said...

You're welcome to use it! I'd appreciate a credit - just include "Color composite by Adam Ginsburg" on the slide (or just "Adam Ginsburg" in the lower right corner). You might also like some of the NIR pictures here: http://imgur.com/gallery/OCeb7 (smaller scale, but more about outflows)