September 17, 2011
The constellations may be old, but the person celebrating beneath them is gloriously new by cosmic standards.
Spitzer's Orion
Birthday · September 17, 2011
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APOD published September 17, 2011. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula, an immense stellar nursery some 1,500 light-years away. This stunning false-color view spans about 40 light-years across the region, constructed using infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Compared to its visual wavelength appearance, the brightest portion of the nebula is likewise centered on Orion's young, massive, hot stars, known as the Trapezium Cluster. But the infrared image also detects the nebula's many protostars, still in the process of formation, seen here in red hues. In fact, red spots along the dark dusty filament to the left of the bright cluster include the protostar cataloged as HOPS 68, recently found to have crystals of the silicate mineral olivine within its protostellar envelope.