APR 30, 2015

Goodness, gracious, great balls of yellow!

WRITTEN BY: Brenda Kelley Kim

In a citizen science initiative, a group of volunteers sifting through images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope have found large yellow balls that indicate active star formation. The yellow color occurs when red and green overlap, which tells scientists that the formation is at its midpoint, right before the stars expand and carve out space in the surrounding areas of gas and dust. The stargazers who found these formations were working as part of the web-based Milky Way project.