Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

Spitzer’s last hurrah is a beautiful image of the spooky Tarantula Nebula

By
An image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope showing the Tarantula Nebula
This image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Tarantula Nebula in two wavelengths of infrared light. The red regions indicate the presence of particularly hot gas, while the blue regions are interstellar dust that is similar in composition to ash from coal or wood-burning fires on Earth. NASA/JPL-Caltech

This week, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope ended its scientific observations after a 16-year-long mission. But the legacy of this infrared telescope lives on, and to celebrate its achievements NASA has released this striking image of the Tarantula Nebula, created from Spitzer data.

Named for its long, spindly legs which resemble a spider, the Tarantula Nebula was one of Spitzer’s first targets, imaged in 2004. The researchers thought it would be an appropriate site to return to in order to commemorate the end of the Spitzer mission.

Recommended Videos

“I think we chose the Tarantula Nebula as one of our first targets because we knew it would demonstrate the breadth of Spitzer’s capabilities,” Michael Werner, a Spitzer’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has been involved with the mission since the beginning, said in a statement. “That region has a lot of interesting dust structures and a lot of star formation happening, and those are both areas where infrared observatories can see a lot of things that you can’t see in other wavelengths.”

In this annotated version of the image below, you can see two key features of the nebula: The site of a supernova, marked as SN 1987a, and an area where massive stars form far closer to each other and far faster than elsewhere in the galaxy, called a “starburst region,” labeled R136 Cluster.

An annotated image of the Tarantula Nebula
This annotated image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Tarantula Nebula in infrared light. The supernova 1987A and the starburst region R136 are noted. NASA/JPL-Caltech

The star SN 1987a has been frequently studied as it glowed extremely brightly when it went supernova, first observed in 1987. The star “burned with the power of 100 million Suns for months,” according to NASA, and it sent out a shockwave which collided with dust and heated it so it radiated infrared light. Spitzer studied the remnant of this explosion to learn more about the building blocks of rocky planets.

Even though Spitzer is no longer operational, astronomers will continue to work through the archive of data which it has left behind to make more discoveries about the universe as seen through the infrared wavelength.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Hubble spots beautiful planetary nebula interacting with the interstellar medium
This Hubble image shows ESO 455-10, a planetary nebula located in the constellation of Scorpius. The color image is composed of near-infrared and optical observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.

This Hubble image shows ESO 455-10, a planetary nebula located in the constellation of Scorpius. The color image is composed of near-infrared and optical observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.  NASA / ESA / Hubble / L. Stanghellini.

This week, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured yet another beautiful image of space: This time, planetary nebula ESO 455-10.

Read more
The Very Large Telescope spots a spooky skull nebula
Captured in astounding detail by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the eerie Skull Nebula is showcased in this new image in beautiful pink and red tones. This planetary nebula, also known as NGC 246, is the first known to be associated with a pair of closely bound stars orbited by a third outer star.

Just in time for Halloween, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released an image of a spooky structure known as the Skull Nebula. This nebula, situated deep in the belly of The Whale constellation (Cetus), is located around 1,600 light-years from Earth. But the nebula is not only thematically appropriate for this weekend, but it is also notable for its unusual configuration of two closely bound stars being orbited by a third more distant star.

Captured in astounding detail by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the eerie Skull Nebula is showcased in this new image in beautiful pink and red tones. This planetary nebula, also known as NGC 246, is the first known to be associated with a pair of closely bound stars orbited by a third outer star. ESO

Read more
NASA Chandra images highlight the beauty of the universe in X-ray wavelength
Selection of images made using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory

NASA's Chandra Observatory has been investigating the universe in the X-ray wavelength since its launch in 1999, but it isn't as well known as other observatories like Hubble or Spitzer. Part of the reason why is that the universe looks very different -- sometimes almost unrecognizably so -- in the X-ray wavelength. But this can be an invaluable source of information about distant galaxies and strange space phenomena, especially when X-ray data is combined with other wavelength data into a visible image.

That's why NASA has released this collection of beautiful images that combine X-ray observations with other wavelength observations, to show how tools like Chandra can let us see the universe through different eyes.

Read more