Welcome to the first installment of our new “Picture of the Week” series. We start with an image of Star-forming Region S106 IRS4 taken by the Subaru Telescope. This celestial object, located in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan), first appeared on our website in 2001, in an article entitled “Subaru Stares into a Cradle of Stars.” The Subaru Telescope’s sharp infrared image shows a multitude of low mass objects being born together. These low mass objects are thought to be either small stars or free floating planets. After 100 million years, this nebula will have dispersed and the high mass stars will have burned out. In contrast, the stars with about the same mass as the Sun will be coming to maturity. Having left the cradle, these adult stars will go out in to the Universe and each will continue “life” on its own.

This picture of S106 taken by the Subaru Telescope has been used to show the wonder and beauty of the Cosmos in the book and documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” written by former American Vice President and Nobel Laureate, Al Gore. From 1990’s era observations, we know that there is an object concealed in the disk at the center of the nebula, which is causing ionization and photodissociation (the splitting of molecules by light) in the surrounding material. This image was taken in 2001, soon after the Subaru Telescope’s first light, while adjustments were still ongoing. In those early stages, this image proved the performance capabilities with high resolution (for the era) over a wide field of view.

The stars pictured here are siblings, so to speak, but the course of their “lives” will be determined by the initial mass of each star as it returns back out into the galaxy. Why they have different masses remains a mystery. While it raises questions, we can say this image provides a snapshot of a scene at the beginning of the galaxy’s grand scale (re)cycle.

(Author: Subaru Telescope commissioning team)