APOD 2.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/
Young Stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud

In this picture you see a lot of stars of different shapes, colors, and sizes. The "newborn" stars and cosmic dust clouds, that looks like fog, are glowing in an infrared wavelength range. This is what is causing the "false- color" stars in the picture. This picture was taken from the Spitzer Space Telescope. This Telescope has been very helpful in not only taking beautiful pictures but also in astronomical growths like helping Astronomers make observations about chaotic planetary systems. In this picture is a star forming region which is relatively close to us about 400 light years, close to the southern edge of the Ophouchus constellation, better known as the Cirpent handeler. The rage that this picture covers is around five light years. The stars glow so brightly because as they heat up they heat up the surrounding dust to produce the infrared glow. This area has detected about 300 emerging and newly formed stars. These stars are arounf 300,000 years old, very young compared to the 5 billion year old sun.