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.”
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.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.