DATA: Misti Mountain Observatory


NGC 7129 is a reflection nebula located 3,300 light years away in the constellationCepheus. A young open cluster is responsible for illuminating the surrounding nebula. A recent survey indicates the cluster contains more than 130 stars less than 1 million years old.
 NGC 7129 is located just half a degree from nearby cluster NGC 7142.The nebula is rosebud-shaped; the young stars have blown a large, oddly shaped bubble in the molecular cloud that once surrounded them at their birth. The rosy pink color comes from glowing dust grains on the surface of the bubble being heated by the intense light from the young stars within. The ultra-violet and visible light produced by the young stars is absorbed by the surrounding dust grains. They are heated by this process and release the energy at longer infrared wavelengths as photographed by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The reddish colors in the false-color infrared image suggest the distribution of hydrocarbon rich molecular material.The much cooler molecular cloud outside the bubble is mostly invisible to Spitzer. However, three very young stars near the center of the nebula are sending jets of supersonic gas into the cloud. The collision of these jets heats carbon monoxide molecules in the nebula. This produces the complex nebulosity that appears like a stem of a rosebud.NGC 7129 is a reflection nebula=10.5px and stellar nursery approximately ten light years across.  This interesting and colorful celestial object is located in the constellation Cepheus (named for the king from Greek mythology) and lies approximately 3,330 light years from Earth. The nebula is host to over 100 very young protostars, averaging only about a million years old.  In the false color Spitzer   image   nebular complex resembles a celestial rose bud.  The green stem in the image contains the youngest newborn stars and the pink rosebud is an area of hot dust and gas surrounding these adolescent stars.  Our own sun and solar system are believed to have been born from a nursery similar to NGC 7129.1Located in the upper right and lower left of the above image are red blobs.  These blobs are the result of a combination of stellar material (dust and gas) both falling into and being expelled out of new born protostars and their surrounding accretion disks - a phenomenon known as bipolar outflow.=10.5px  This outflow is referred to as a jet, and observations of NGC 7129 show the results of such jets in the aforementioned red blobs.  Astronomers have classified these features as Herbig-Haro Objects. Until relatively recently these objects were believed to be rare; however, in recent years, hundreds more Herbig-Haro Objects have been observed in stellar nurseries such as NGC 7129.