Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Heated Interstellar Dust


"This image shows the entire sky in infrared light at nine micrometres. The bright stripe extending from left to right is the disc of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Several bright regions corresponding to strong infrared radiation appear along or next to the Galactic Plane. These regions are sites of newly born stars. At the brightest region in the very centre of the image, towards the centre of our Galaxy, old stars crowd together. AKARI observed the infrared radiation emitted from the heated interstellar dust."

Image via European Space Agency. Click to enlarge.

1 comment:

Cervantes said...

Well, okay, but those old stars are 6,000 years old, at the most.