Starship Asterisk*

Vulpine wrote:
The description confuses me as the image, at least to my eye, has the Christmas tree upright. The upper left portion of the overall image is very plain and featureless while the lower left near the base of the apparent tree has both the head of the fox and the unicorn.

Could someone possible repost the image with annotations to either confirm or correct my viewpoints?

"lies at the upper left,"

"...lies almost at the center of the image."

Indigo_Sunrise wrote:While TPTB updated most of the description/explanation from this APOD, they should have changed the part about the convoluted pelt that

"lies at the upper left,"

to:

"...lies almost at the center of the image."

To me, the 'feature' in the upper left of today's image looks more like a whirlpool or an almost side-view of a flower, and was confusing me....


But a very interesting and detailed image!

Vulpine wrote:
So they simply reposted the image, rotated 90° to the left and zoomed out a bit.

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/2412-sig05-028-Stellar-Snowflake-Cluster wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]The combined IRAC-MIPS image shows the presence of organic molecules mixed with dust as wisps of green, which have been illuminated by nearby star formation. The larger yellowish dots neighboring the baby red stars in the Snowflake Cluster are massive stellar infants forming from the same cloud. The blue dots sprinkled across the image represent older Milky Way stars at various distances along this line of sight. [size=125]The image is a five-channel, false-color composite, showing emission from wavelengths of 3.6 and 4.5 microns (blue)[/size][/color], [color=#008F8F][size=125]5.8 microns (cyan)[/size][/color], [color=#008F00][size=125]8 microns (green)[/size][/color], and [color=#FF0000][size=125]24 microns (red)[/size][/color].[/b]

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<<Newborn stars, hidden behind thick dust, are revealed in this image of a section of the Christmas Tree Cluster from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, created in joint effort between Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) instruments.

The newly revealed infant stars appear as pink and red specks toward the center of the combined IRAC-MIPS image (left panel). The stars appear to have formed in regularly spaced intervals along linear structures in a configuration that resembles the spokes of a wheel or the pattern of a snowflake. Hence, astronomers have nicknamed this the "Snowflake Cluster."

Star-forming clouds like this one are dynamic and evolving structures. Since the stars trace the straight line pattern of spokes of a wheel, scientists believe that these are newborn stars, or "protostars." At a mere 100,000 years old, these infant structures have yet to "crawl" away from their location of birth. Over time, the natural drifting motions of each star will break this order, and the snowflake design will be no more.

While most of the visible-light stars that give the Christmas Tree Cluster its name and triangular shape do not shine brightly in Spitzer's infrared eyes, all of the stars forming from this dusty cloud are considered part of the cluster.Like a dusty cosmic finger pointing up to the newborn clusters, Spitzer also illuminates the optically dark and dense Cone Nebula, the tip of which can be seen towards the bottom left corner of each image.

IRAC's near and mid-infrared eyes (top right) show that the nebula is still actively forming stars. The wisps of red (represented as green in the IRAC-MIPS image) are organic molecules mixed with dust, which has been illuminated by nearby star formation. The IRAC picture is a four-channel, false-color composite, showing emission from wavelengths of 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (green), 5.8 microns (orange) and 8.0 microns (red).

MIPS' far-infrared eyes (bottom right) the colder dust of the nebula and unwraps the youngest stellar babies from their dusty covering. This is a false-color image showing emission at 24 microns (red).>>

I tried to identify the various objects in the image. I think I got them. But I welcome any corrections.

geissi wrote:
If you have a close look, you can even see the fox's eyes and nose

DavidLeodis wrote:I've just been looking at the Exif information for the image. In the history it states numerous times starting at 2012:03:17 14:08:11 +1.00 through to 2012:03:17 22:13:01 +1.00. There is then a clear break in what I assume are the exposure times as the next date/time is 2012:03:18 10:50:47 +1.00 through to 2012:03:18 14:28:43 +1.00. Unless I am misunderstanding something (the +1.00 is 1 hour ahead of GMT) then most of the image data was acquired during daylight at the Remseck, Germany, location. In Rolf's Geissinger's website it stated with the image "Exposure: 25 x 1200 sec Ha / 22 x 1200 sec OIII / 6 x 1200 sec SII / 1 x 300 sec RGB - Total exposure approx. 20 hours". I had not realised that image data can be obtained during daylight :!:. I assume therefore that Ha, OIII and SII filters do not need darkness. :oops: but still trying to :)