Nursery of Giants

Hidden behind a shroud of dust in the constellation Cygnus is a stellar nursery called DR21, which is giving birth to some of the most massive stars in our galaxy. Visible light images reveal no trace of this interstellar cauldron because of heavy dust obscuration. In fact, visible light is attenuated in DR21 by a factor of more than 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (ten thousand trillion heptillion). New images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope allow us to peek behind the cosmic veil and pinpoint one of the most massive natal stars yet seen in our Milky Way galaxy. The never-before-seen star is 100,000 times as bright as the Sun. Also revealed for the first time is a powerful outflow of hot gas emanating from this star and bursting through a giant molecular cloud. This image is a large-scale mosaic assembled from individual photographs obtained with the InfraRed Array Camera (IRAC) aboard Spitzer. The image covers an area about two times that of a full moon. The mosaic is a composite of images obtained at mid-infrared wavelengths of 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (green), 5.8 microns (orange) and 8 microns (red). The brightest infrared cloud near the top c

Date: 2004-04-13
Photographer / author: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Collection: JPL
Archive: NASA Image and Video Library
Type: photograph