The Wizard Nebula
Posted by Prateek Tripathi on Wednesday, March 24, 2010
This image of the open star cluster NGC 7380, also known as the Wizard
Nebula, is a mosaic of images from the WISE mission spanning an area on
the sky of about 5 times the size of the full moon. NGC 7380 is located
in the constellation Cepheus about 7,000 light-years from Earth within
the
Milky Way Galaxy. The star cluster is embedded in a nebula, which spans
some 110 light-years. The stars of NGC 7380 have emerged from this
star-forming region in the last 5 million years or so, making it a
relatively young cluster. WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
mission, scans the entire sky in infrared light, picking up the glow of
hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images. The
mission is designed to uncover objects never seen before, including the
coolest
stars, the universe's most luminous galaxies and some of the darkest
near-Earth asteroids and comets. Its vast catalogs will help answer
fundamental questions about the origins of planets, stars and galaxies.
WISE joins two other infrared missions in space -- NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency
mission. WISE is different from these missions in that it will survey
the entire sky. It is designed to cast a wide net to catch all sorts of
unseen
cosmic treasures, including rare oddities. All four infrared detectors
aboard WISE were used to make this image. NGC 7380 was discovered by
Caroline Herschel in 1787. Her brother, William Herschel, discovered
infrared light in 1800. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA