NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the most violent stars in our galaxy, veiled in cosmic dust. For the first time scientists are seeing gigantic stars, some, 100,000 times as bright as our Sun. Located in the Cygnus constellation 10,000 light years away, a region called DR21 which is buried in so much space dust that no visible light escapes it. Only with Spitzer's highly-sensitive, infrared detectors are astronomers able to see the stellar nursery being born inside a blanket of clouds. Through Spitzer's eyes, researchers were astonished to see the dust clouds annihilated when the massive stars exploded. These new observations from Spitzer revealed to astronomers events that were previously invisible with the naked eye.
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NASA ID
ksc_041504_spitzer
Date Created
April 16, 2004
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KSC
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video
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NASA or National Aeronautics and Space Administration
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