APOD 2,2

This picture, 'Young Stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud' caught my eye straight off for several reasons. The picture contains very vibrant colors and a wide range of hues, some of which include purple and pinkish pinpricks of light which are in fact stars. This coloration is due to the fact that the picture was taken in infrared wavelengths. More specifically the infrared wavelengths are produced by the heat from newborn stars, which heats up surrounding gas and hydrogen molecules and produces the aforementioned glow. This is also a quite interesting picture, because it deals with the constellation Ophiuchus, the nearest star-forming region, which we have been quizzed on for weeks on end in our Constellation Quizzes. While perusing the embedded links, I learned that this region of Ophiuchus is constantly forming stars, specifically 300 newborn stars which are 'newly' formed, only 300,000 years old. This is rather young for a star though, seeing as our Sun is 5 billion years old.