This gorgeous new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows something once considered little more than an annoyance: cosmic dust. For many years, astronomers thought of dust as a problem which blocked out important objects from view, but in recent decades they have learned about dust’s importance in forming stars and planets, and even making new molecules in space.
The image shows clouds of dust and gas located near the Tarantula Nebula, a place also renowned for its beauty. It is part of a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud, located 160,000 light-years away and a hotbed of star formation.
You can see the full image below:
The star formation in this region is spurred on by the presence of dust, which clumps together and attracts more particles due to gravity, eventually building up the cores which go on to form planets or stars. The dust also acts as a cooling mechanism, helping gas to condense and add to the mixture.
“The nebula’s colorful gas clouds hold wispy tendrils and dark clumps of dust,” Hubble scientists explain. “This dust is different from ordinary household dust, which may include of bits of soil, skin cells, hair, and even plastic. Cosmic dust is often comprised of carbon or of molecules called silicates, which contain silicon and oxygen.”
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Dust can still be a problem for astronomers though — that’s why instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope operate in the infrared portion of the spectrum, as this allows them to peer through the dust to see structures that would otherwise be hidden. This works because although dust is opaque in the visible light portion of the spectrum, which is the wavelength that our eyes can see and at which Hubble’s instruments primarily operate, the same dust allows infrared radiation to pass through it.
By combining data from visible light telescopes like Hubble and infrared telescopes like Webb, scientists are able to see both the dusty objects which exist throughout our galaxy and beyond, and the interior structures which would otherwise be blocked from view by the dust.