Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/E. Churchwell (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and the GLIMPSE Team

Black Widow Nebula Hiding in the Dust

In the constellation Circinus, where previous visible-light observations by the Digital Sky Survey (left) saw only a faint hourglass-shaped patch of obscuring dust and gas, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope's dust-piercing eyes see a big "Black Widow Nebula" teeming with clusters of massive young stars (right).

In the Spitzer image, the two opposing bubbles are being formed in opposite directions by the powerful outflows from massive groups of forming stars. The baby stars can be seen as specks of yellow where the two bubbles overlap.

When individual stars form from molecular clouds of gas and dust they produce intense radiation and very strong particle winds. Both the radiation and the stellar winds blow the dust outward from the star creating a cavity or, bubble.

In the case of the Black Widow Nebula, astronomers suspect that a large cloud of gas and dust condensed to create multiple clusters of massive star formation. The combined winds from these groups of large stars probably blew out bubbles into the direction of least resistance, forming a double bubble.

The infrared image was captured by the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) Legacy project. The Spitzer 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).

About the Object	Object Name: Black Widow Nebula Object Type: Nebula Position (J2000): RA: 15h03m31.98s Dec: -57d39m56.6s Constellation: Circinus
About the Data	Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/E. Churchwell (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and the GLIMPSE Team Instrument: IRAC Wavelength: 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (green), 5.8 microns (orange), 8.0 microns (red) Image Scale: 16 x 16 arcminutes Orientation: North is 151 degrees CW from up Release Date: 28 October 2005

Individual Images

	IRAC view of Black Widow Nebula Screen-Resolution (450x450): JPEG High-Resolution (1600x1600): JPEG | Mac TIFF | PC TIFF Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/E. Churchwell (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and the GLIMPSE Team
	One-channel visible-light comparison image. Screen-Resolution (450x450): JPEG High-Resolution (1600x1600): JPEG | Mac TIFF | PC TIFF Credit: DSS

The Spitzer Space Telescope is a NASA mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website is maintained by the Spitzer Science Center, located on the campus of the California Institute of Technology and part of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.