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Young Stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud

Explanation: Dust clouds and embedded newborn stars glow at infrared wavelengths in this tantalizing false-color composition from WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The cosmic canvas features one of the closest star forming regions, part of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex some 400 light-years distant near the southern edge of the pronounceable constellation Ophiuchus. After forming along a large cloud of cold molecular hydrogen gas, young stars heat the surrounding dust to produce the infrared glow. Stars in the process of formation, called young stellar objects or YSOs, are embedded in the compact pinkish nebulae seen here, but are otherwise hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes. An exploration of the region in penetrating infrared light has detected emerging and newly formed stars whose average age is estimated to be a mere 300,000 years. That's extremely young compared to the Sun's age of 5 billion years. The prominent reddish nebula at the lower right surrounding the star Sigma Scorpii is a reflection nebula produced by dust scattering starlight. This view from WISE spans almost 2 degrees and covers about 14 light-years at the estimated distance of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud.

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WISE: Rho Ophiuchi: Treasure Trove of Beauty (2011 Apr 01)
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=23283

It is interesting to compare the infrared image with a visual one:
In the infrared image, a red crescent shape at the bottom right of the image is very prominent. This crescent is centered on hot star Sigma Scorpii. In the visual image, you can see that Sigma Scorpii is surrounded by a red emission nebula, but the nebula is much brighter on one side of the star. The infrared image shows that there is a lot of warm dust on this side of the star.

You can also see, in the visual image, that the star formation that is so prominent in the infrared image is going on around a group of stars that are deeply buried in dust, to the upper left of Sigma Scorpii. But this group of stars is not Rho Ophicuhi. Rho Ophiuchi is the group of stars surrounded by the bright blue reflection nebula at top, so there is no star formation going on right next to Rho Ophiuchi itself.

Ann

Lovely picture; makes a great PC background!

Beautiful picture. I always wonder how some of these things get their names. Was Rho Ophiuchi named after someone or what. The spell checker doesn't even recognize it as a word. How about Ophiuchus? I know they must be related, but how in the world (no pun intended) does the whole world of astronomers and scientist come up with and agree on these names?

moonstruck wrote:Beautiful picture. I always wonder how some of these things get their names. Was Rho Ophiuchi named after someone or what. The spell checker doesn't even recognize it as a word. How about Ophiuchus? I know they must be related, but how in the world (no pun intended) does the whole world of astronomers and scientist come up with and agree on these names? :?

Rho is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. Ophiuchus is one of the 88 constellations, meaning "the serpent bearer", an element of Greek mythology. A common system of stellar nomenclature is called the Bayer system, where the brightest stars of a constellation are ordered with Greek letters (alpha brightest, then beta, etc- although there are exceptions) followed by the genitive form of the constellation they are found in. Thus, Rho Ophiuchi is one of the lesser bright stars in the constellation of Ophiuchus. Brighter stars often have actual names, rather than just catalog designations like this.

Thanks Chris. Succinct and instructive.

Yeah, thanks Chris. I knew you'd know. I once clicked on your cloudbait.com site to check it out for a few minutes. I ended up spending the whole day checking it out. Way to go and keep up the good work. Free education at it's best.