Sometimes Dust is Beautiful
The interstellar medium is not my favorite topic in astronomy, but JWST makes it look so pretty that even I care about space dust bunnies.
The interstellar medium is not my favorite topic in astronomy.
Fundamentally, it is the study of interstellar dust bunnies — those clumps of gas and dust that clog up our skies and block our ability to see more distant stars and galaxies. They don’t vary like the pulsating stars I love most. They don’t have stories that alter how we understand our universe like galaxies and galaxy clusters. The gas and dust between stars are just transient blobs of material — sometimes bright and sometimes dark — that are either released during stellar death or waiting to form new stellar life.
The thing is, infrared telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are changing how we see the interstellar medium. In these longer wavelengths of light, formerly opaque clouds are now semi-transparent regions. What was once just a hole in the sky can now be seen as interesting star-forming regions or other vibrant locations rich in never-before-seen dynamics. Regions that were once just bright blobs are now getting resolved into individual stars that are as active as the active galactic nuclei I love… just at smaller scales.
In this closer look, we will look at some of our new views on the sky, revealed by our new IR views on nebulae.
