It may look like some abstract painting, but in fact this mixture of colors is a complex star-making structure called Ru Ophioki (Rho Ophiuchi) as photographed by the satellite WISE
It may look like some abstract painting, but in fact this mixture of colors is a complex star formation structure called Rho Ophiuchi. The WISE - Wide-field Infrared Explorer satellite took a spectacular picture of the region, which is one of the closest star-forming structures to Earth.
The amazing variety of colors seen in the image represent different wavelengths of infrared light. The bright white nebula in the center of the image glows due to heating by nearby stars, and the result is called an emission nebula. This is also true for most of the multihued gas that dominates most of the image, including the blue-blue rainbow-like object near the lower right. The bright red area on the lower right is light from the central star - Sigma Scorpius (Sigma Scropii) - which is reflected in the dust surrounding it and creates a nebula called the reflection nebula. The darker areas scattered over the entire image are pockets of compressed, cold gas that blocks the background lighting, resulting in an obscuring (or dark) nebulous island. To the system WISE There are long wavelength detectors that can usually see through dark nebulae, but these nebulae are very opaque.
Laboratories JPL manages and operates the WISE On behalf of NASA's Science Mission Director in Washington, USA. The principal investigator, Edward Wright (Edward Wright), located at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The mission was selected by NASA as part of a program Explorers Program Managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA. The scientific equipment was built by a laboratory Space Dynamics, and the satellite was built by Ball Aviation Space and Technologies (Ball Aerospace & Technologies) in Boulder, Colorado, USA. The scientific activities and data processing are done at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech (Caltech) manages the laboratories JPL for nasa
More information can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/wise http://wise.astro.ucla.edu http://jpl.nasa.gov/wise
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