Seeing colors

Data are awesome and I have been known to call a spectrum beautiful, but the images that we're taking here may not be what you consider "pretty".  Here's one of the images (preliminary results) we took the other night:

Exciting and interesting, huh?  The even more intriguing part is that the bright points you see are not actually what we're looking for.  The reason why I have a "job" as a grad student is because when I come down the mountain from an observing run, there is plenty of work to be done to reduce the data.  When we correct for electronic and sky noise, calibrations, etc, faint features will pop out and we will be able to tell what exactly is happening in this region.  So, what is happening in this region?  Well, here is a much nicer picture to show the complex activity in the area of the sky where we point our telescope:

The image above was taken with Spitzer Space Telescope and it shows the region NGC 1333, a young cluster where star formation is very active.  This star forming region is the focus of my dissertation, and quickly becoming my favorite zip code in the Universe.  NGC 1333 is located in the direction of the Perseus constellation, about 1000 light years away from us and it has been forming stars for (only) about 1 million years.  The colors above represent different infrared wavelengths, and signify gas of various temperature, density and composition.  With the WIYN telescope we're looking at yet another wavelength of near-infrared light, and with CARMA (from previous posts) we were looking at millimeter-wavelength light. 

Looking at the same region in various wavelengths (colors) tells us a lot about the activity of forming stars.  As stars form, some gas is ejected outward in what are known as "bipolar outflows".  These ejections shock the surrounding gas, and that gas emits light.  Depending on what wavelength of light is emitted, we can tell what type of gas, and how much energy is in a star forming region.  This is important for understanding how stars form, how long they will be forming, and what might eventually halt further formation of stars in a cluster.

My observations at WIYN will tell about the shocked gas in the region NGC 1333.  In 2008 my professor made similar observations, and now we can tell what has changed in this region in the three years since.  How fast is the gas being ejected from regions where stars are known to be forming, and in what direction?  Stay tuned...