Message #224224

[the Mark of Caine]

A rare, infrared view of the very young star L1157 with its flaring jets from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (right) shows us what our own solar system might have looked like billions of years ago. In visible light, this star and its surrounding regions appear black (left). The reddish haze all around the Spitzer image (right) is dust. The white dots are other stars, mostly in background. The Spitzer image has infrared light of 8 microns is colored red; 4.5-micron infrared light is green; and 3.6-micron infrared light is blue. The visible-light picture is from the Palomar Observatory-Space Telescope Science Institute Digitized Sky Survey. Blue visible-light is blue; red visible light is green, and near-infrared light is red. (Credit: NASA, JPL Cal Tech, L. Looney (University of Illinois))