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This colorful image from NASA's now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope shows a nebula — a cloud of gas and dust in space — in the constellation Sagittarius, along the plane of the Milky Way. It was captured as part of Spitzer's GLIMPSE survey (the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire).
A monster in the clouds
With a little imagination, the shape resembles Godzilla:
- The stars at upper right, where the creature's eyes and snout would be, are at an unknown distance from Earth but within our galaxy.
- The bright region at lower left — Godzilla's right hand — is W33, about 7,800 light-years from Earth.
Seeing through dust with infrared
In visible light, this region is almost completely hidden behind dust clouds. Infrared light, with wavelengths longer than our eyes can detect, passes through the dust and reveals what lies within. The image uses colors to stand for different infrared wavelengths:
| Color | What it mostly shows |
|---|---|
| Blue and cyan | light emitted mainly by stars |
| Green | dust and organic molecules called hydrocarbons |
| Red | warm dust heated by stars or supernovae (exploding stars) |
| Yellow and white | combinations of those wavelengths |
Stellar recycling
When massive stars die and explode as supernovae, they reshape the regions around them, carving the gas and dust into new forms. They also push material together, triggering the birth of new stars that carry the cycle on.
Sources
- NASA Image and Video Library: "Godzilla Nebula Imaged by Spitzer" (PIA24579), also in NASA's Photojournal.
Licence : CC0 1.0 (domaine public) · Adapté de images.nasa.gov
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