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Similarly to most gas clouds in the universe, Rho Oph is mainly composed of molecular hydrogen gas, in which new stars may form. Rho Ophiuchi is one of the closest star-forming nebula
to our solar system, lying only 407 light years away, in a region of space located between the Scorpius and Ophiuchus constellations.
Lately, the Spitzer Space Telescope has been able to examine the area in great detail in the X-ray and the infrared spectrums, revealing the presence of about 300 young stars, many less than 300,000 years old, while some stars still exist since the period soon after the birth of the universe, more than 12 billion years ago.
Lori Allen from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astronomy and the lead investigator of the new observations made with the Spitzer observatory says that Rho Oph is the preferred region for astronomical study, especially while investigating star formation, as it is home to some of the youngest stars in the whole universe, that can be observed in their early evolutionary stage, not to mention that Rho Oph is relatively close to Earth, fact that enables very detailed observations that can be correlated to those seen in distant star clusters.
The particular image seen here pictures the most massive of the clouds in the Rho Oph nebula, Lynds 1688, in the infrared spectrum, which can put into evidence, with relative ease, the temperatures of the young stars and the different evolutionary stages which they go through. Some of the youngest ones seem to present accretion disk of matter that could, in theory, create planets. Because they haven't yet had time to clear the whole mass of gas surrounding them, most are embedded into compact gas clouds, represented in red, while old star can be seen as blue in the image.
You can see how the central regions of the nebula appear to have a white color, due to the excess heat generated by the young stars, which is being absorbed by the gas cloud and re-emitted in the form of infrared light. However, the color of the nebula is not dependent only on temperature, but on composition and dust grain size also. Images taken by the Spitzer observatory show how the vast majority of stars are mostly found in filaments of cold, dense gas in the the lower center, left of the nebula.
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