Space is full of dust. You probably know intuitively that this isn't exactly the same kind of dust as the stuff collecting on the jacket of that pop astronomy book you keep meaning to read. Cosmic dust, also known as "space dust," is the name for all of the extremely fine solid particles that we observe floating in space between stars. Above, this combination emission/reflection nebula in the constellation Cygnus is intertwined with black rivers of dust and is probably a star-forming region. Next, see dust swirling around a black hole.
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The pinwheel of dust at the upper left is an elliptical galaxy sliding toward the central black hole inside Perseus A. Space dust is generally drawn into orbit around nearby massive objects like black holes, stars and planets. Click ahead to see a nearby nebula in the Perseus cluster.
Image Credit: NASA - Hubble Heritage Team - digital version copyright Science Faction
This infrared image of baby stars in a nebula of the Perseus constellation was taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The stars appear as reddish-pink dots to the right, and the pinkish color indicates that they're still shrouded by the cosmic dust that collapsed to form them. Check out the next page to see some truly doomed dust.
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Above, a giant disk of cold gas and dust fuels a suspected black hole. Black holes are so dense that they pull everything within range into their gravitational field -- even light itself. Fine particle matter is no exception. Next, you'll see how a cloud of dust becomes a planet.
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The dust around this brown dwarf star is a proto-planetary disk, from which planets may form. Astronomers believe planets like our Earth come together in a process known as accretion, where hot masses of gas and dust swirl around a star until, by the force of gravity, the gases and the dust begin to collect into distinct clumps of matter, which eventually become planets. Click over to the next page to see another image of planet-forming dust.
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This image was generated by a computer, based on information gathered from the Hubble Space Telescope. In the picture, an infant star about 320 light years from our solar system is swaddled in a warm cloud of cosmic dust. Next, see how a moon can pull dust particles from a large planet.
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Saturn's shepherd moon Prometheus seems to be pulling material off of the strands of the F Ring, the outermost bright ring. The gravity of the small moon helps define the orbit of the dust ring, in addition to hijacking a stream of particles as the moon moves along. Click ahead for another view of Saturn's rings.
Image Credit: NASA - digital version copyright Science Faction
Saturn's distinctive rings are pictured in a photo returned by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft. In a sense, the way large planets like Saturn collect orbiting rings of dust mirrors the way newborn stars collect proto-planetary disks. Next, see what happens when two gassy, dusty galaxies come together.
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This Hubble image reveals the dust lanes and star clusters of this giant galaxy. The strands of dust suggest the galaxy was formed from a past merger of two gas-rich galaxies. Up next: You've probably heard someone's voice echo, but what the heck is a light echo?
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A light echo is actually somewhat like a sound echo. It occurs when a sudden flash of light moves outward from a star. As seen in the brightly illuminated clouds of the photo above, we observe the original flash directly, but then we also observe the light as it reflects off of the surrounding dust and travels in our direction from different angles. Witness the birth of a star in the next image.
Image Credit: NASA-ESA - Hubble Heritage - digital version by Science Faction
In this artist's conception, we peer through the dark dust of L1014 to witness the birth of a star. Astronomers believe that stars form in massive pockets of dust and gas. As gravity begins to act on the matter in these clouds, they collapse into denser and denser and hotter and hotter forms, eventually becoming the fusion engines we know as stars. Next, you'll see the tail of a comet.
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Comet Siding Spring is a mass of ice and dust (imagine a giant, dirty snowball) that orbited as part of the deeply frozen Oort Cloud (a haze of comet-like objects surrounding our solar system) for billions of years. It was, at some time, knocked out of this orbit and booted onto a course that brings it closer to the sun.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
This portrait of comet Wild 2 is a composite image from a Jan. 2, 2004, flyby of the unmanned spacecraft Stardust. A quick-exposure picture captured surface detail of the nucleus, which is approximately 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) in diameter. The image was combined with a picture taken seconds later using a longer exposure to show the jets of dust and gas, which can trail millions of miles behind the comet.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Comet Hale-Bopp passed through our Solar System in the mid-1990s. This is a series of false-color images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, in which the brightest areas are white and the different intensities are shown in varying reds, with the darkest areas black. The upper left picture captures a dust outburst from the comet while it was past Jupiter.
Image Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope caught this wondrous image of the Helix Nebula. The brighter red circle in the center of the image is the glow from a dusty disk circling a white dwarf (the disk is too small to be photographed clearly). This dust, discovered by Spitzer's infrared heat-seeking vision, was most likely kicked up by comets that survived the death of their star. Learn more about newborn stars next.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.of Ariz.
Newborn stars, hidden behind thick dust, are revealed in this image of a section of the Christmas Tree cluster from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Much of this dust will eventually be collected by the gravity of stars and accumulating planets. See the dust rising from the Sombrero Galaxy next.
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One of the biggest galaxies in the cluster known as Virgo, the Sombrero Galaxy is a remarkable collection of stars. It has a bright nucleus, and around its central bulge of stars there is a large disk of dust. On the next page, you'll get a closer look at the heart of the galaxy where we make our humble home.
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Normally, it's next to impossible to see the center of the Milky Way in visible light, but infrared light cuts through the dust. The region pictured here is enormous almost beyond comprehension, with a horizontal span of 2,400 light years and a vertical span of 1,360 light years. Although the bulk of the objects in this picture live near the Milky Way center, the features above and below the galactic plane are closer to Earth. Next, see a nebula visible to the naked eye from Earth.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Tarantula Nebula is the largest known stellar nursery and is visible to the naked eye as a large milky patch. If it were as close to us as the Orion Nebula, we'd see it during the day covering a quarter of the sky! Eventually, we expect this nebula to become more compressed, with the colorful dust and gas you see in the photo collapsing into a collection of stars. Click ahead to see massive towers of dust in space.
Image Credit: NASA-ESA / digital version by Science Faction/Getty Images
This is an interstellar maternity ward. NASA released this 2010 photo of the Carina Nebula -- an area where stars are born -- to celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope's 20th anniversary in space. Infant stars within the tall pillar of cool hydrogen and dust are spewing jets of gas. See another dusty star cluster in the next image.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA/M. Livio/Hubble 20th Anniversary Team
The Seven Sisters star cluster, also known as Pleiades, is one of our most recognizable friends in the night sky. These stars are normally visible with the naked eye, but infrared images like the one above allow us to get a look at the nebular dust that obscures the direct light of these beautiful stars.
Image Credit: Stocktrek/Brand X Pictures/Stocktrek
Of course, when we think of dust from space, our minds tend to go for the familiar images of astronauts' footprints, and the surface of that gray, lonely place where Armstrong, Aldrin and the others once walked. The moon's soil is not cosmic dust, however -- it's part of the moon itself.
Image Credit: NASA
This is the Cone Nebula -- named for its apparent conical shape in early sightings. The Cone Nebula is a place where stars are created. The densest pockets of gas and dust will eventually collapse to form stellar masses, which may form proto-planetary disks and solar systems of their own. Next, you'll see scientists who have captured a bit of cosmic dust for research.
Image Credit: Courtesy NASA and STScI
The Stardust material sample collector returned to Earth in 2006 bearing gifts from afar. These privileged researchers in Houston, Texas, were able to study dust captured and returned from the comet Wild 2, as well as dust from interstellar space. Next, see the collection apparatus up close.
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This grid is like a cosmic butterfly net. Made of a porous, low-density substance known as aerogel, the rectangles shown above bear tiny particles captured from the Stardust spacecraft's journey. It may look like a small reward in return for a seven-year mission, but this nearly invisible dust can greatly illuminate our understanding of the cosmos.
Now that you've seen our Space Dust Pictures, check out our Black Hole Pictures!
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