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Numerous arches of magnetic field lines danced and swayed above a large active region over about a 30-hour period (July 17-18, 2017). We can also see the magnetic field lines from the large active region reached out and connected with a smaller active region. Those linked lines then strengthened (become brighter), but soon began to develop a kink in them and rather swiftly faded from view. All of this activity is driven by strong magnetic forces associated with the active regions. The images were taken in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light.

Dozens of newborn stars sprouting jets from their dusty cocoons have been spotted in images from NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope. In this view showing a portion of sky near Canis Major, infrared data from Spitzer are green and blue, while longer-wavelength infrared light from NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) are red.

The jets appear in green, while young stars are a yellow-orange hue. Some of the jets can be seen as streaks, while others appear as blobs because only portions of the jet can be seen. In some cases, the stars producing jets cant be seen while their jets can. Those stars are so embedded in their dusty cocoon that they are too faint to be seen at Spitzers wavelengths.

This is a lesser-known region of star formation, located near the outer edge of our Milky Way galaxy. Spitzer is showing that even these more sparse regions of the galaxy are aglow with stellar youth.

The pink hues are from organic star-forming molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Stars in the pink regions are a bit older than the rambunctious ones spewing jets, but still relatively young in cosmic terms.

In this image, Spitzers 3.6- and 4.5-micron data are blue and green, respectively, while WISEs 12-micron data are red. The Spitzer data were taken as part of the missions Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire 360, or Glimpse 360 project, which is pointing the Spitzer Space telescope away from the galactic center to complete a full 360-degree scan of the Milky Way plane.

WISE all-sky observations are boosting Spitzers imaging capabilities by providing the longer-wavelength infrared coverage the mission lost when it ran out of coolant, as planned, in 2009.

This image from NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, highlights several star-forming regions. There are five distinct centers of star birth in this one image alone. Star-forming nebulae (called HII regions by astronomers) are clouds of gas and dust that have been heated up by nearby stars recently formed from the same cloud.

The largest, brightest cloud, in the upper right is known as Gum 22. Its named after Colin Gum, an Australian astronomer who surveyed the southern hemisphere sky in the early 1950s looking for star-forming regions like these. He catalogued 85 new such regions, named Gum 1 to85 (Gum Crater on the moon was also named in his honor).

Going counter-clockwise from Gum 22, the other catalogued nebulae in the image are Gum 23 (part of same cloud as 22), IRAS 09002-4732 (orange cloud near center), Bran 226 (upper cloud of the two at lower left), and finally Gum 25 at far lower left. There are also several smaller and/or more distant regions scattered throughout the image that have yet to be catalogued. Most of the regions are thought to be part of our local Orion spiral arm spur in the Milky Way galaxy. Their distances range from about 4,000 to 10,000 light-years away.

Notice the very bright green star near the lower right portion of the image. You can tell its a star because it appears to have spikes sticking out of it (diffraction spikes like these are an optical effect caused by the structure of the telescope). Bright stars in WISE images are typically blue, so you know this one is special. Known as IRAS 08535-4724, its a unique type of stellar giant called a carbon star. Carbon stars are similar to red giants stars, which are much larger than the sun, glow brightly in longer wavelengths, and are in the late stages of their lives. But they have unusually high amounts of carbon in their outer atmospheres. Astronomers think this carbon comes either from convection currents deep within a stars core, or from a nearby neighboring star, from which it is siphoned. Recent evidence suggests that a carbon star like this one will end its life in an extremely powerful explosion called a gamma-ray burst, briefly outshining the sun a million trillion times.

The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent light emitted at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light of 12 and 22 microns, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust.