Talk:Westerhout 40

File:The Spitzer Space Telescope's view of W40.jpg scheduled for POTD

Hello! This is to let editors know that the featured picture File:The Spitzer Space Telescope's view of W40.jpg, which is used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for June 25, 2021. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2021-06-25. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:02, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Westerhout 40 (W40) is a star-forming region in the Milky Way located in the constellation Serpens, approximately 1,420 light-years from the Solar System. This photograph, taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, reveals the stellar nursery in infrared light. A young cluster of several hundred stars is located at the center of the nebula, and stellar winds and radiation emanating from these stars have blown bubbles in the surrounding gas; the expanding bubbles have produced the rough shape of a butterfly seen in the image. Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera took this mid-infrared image in the 8.0-micron, 5.8-micron, 4.5-micron and 3.6-micron bands, here represented by red, orange, green and blue, respectively.

Photograph credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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