Spitzer's View of IRAS 19312+1950 (Annotated) (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Spitzer's View of IRAS 19312+1950 (Annotated)

Caption

An age-defying star designated as IRAS 19312+1950 (arrow) exhibits features characteristic of a very young star and a very old star. The object stands out as extremely bright inside a large, chemically rich cloud of material, as shown in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. A NASA-led team of scientists thinks the star - which is about 10 times as massive as our sun and emits about 20,000 times as much energy - is a newly forming protostar. That was a big surprise because the region had not been known as a stellar nursery before. But the presence of a nearby interstellar bubble, which indicates the presence of a recently formed massive star, also supports this idea.

Credit

NASA/JPL-Caltech

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