Space news roundup

Spitzer Space Telescope provides a look at the creation of new stars:


The inset picture is one using visible light, which masks what's really going on, since the dust is absorbing all the light and making things appear dark. The larger photo is the one Spitzer captured using infrared detectors, which cut through the dust and shows the heat in the region.

Go here for the full story. Snippet:

The striking picture reveals an eclectic mix of embryonic stars living in the tattered neighborhood of one of the most famous massive stars in our Milky Way galaxy, Eta Carinae. Astronomers say that radiation and winds from Eta Carinae and its massive siblings ripped apart the surrounding cloud of gas and dust, shocking the new stars into being.

"We knew that stars were forming in this region before, but Spitzer has shown us that the whole environment is swarming with embryonic stars of an unprecedented multitude of different masses and ages," said Dr. Robert Gehrz, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, a member of the team that made the Spitzer observations.

Voyager 1 reaches the edge of the heliosphere:

The 1970s craft has traveled further away from the Earth than any other man-made object. The details this article provides about where Voyager 1 is now are fascinating. Last week I read another blogger say (and I can't remember who it was) that what's truly amazing is that Voyager's onboard computers have smallers CPUs than the average cellphone does today.


And lastly...

It turns out that the Andromeda galaxy, neighbor to our own Milky Way, is 3 times bigger than we previously thought. Not that size matters. :-D