A dark nebula or absorption nebula is a type of interstellar cloud, particularly molecular clouds, that is so dense that it obscures the visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it, such as background stars and emission or reflection nebulae. The extinction of the light is caused by interstellar dust grains located in the coldest, densest parts of molecular clouds. Clusters and large complexes of dark nebulae are associated with Giant Molecular Clouds. Isolated small dark nebulae are called Bok globules. Like other interstellar dust or material, things it obscures are only visible using radio waves in radio astronomy or infrared in infrared astronomy.
Dark clouds appear so because of sub-micrometre-sized dust particles, coated with frozen carbon monoxide and nitrogen, which effectively block the passage of light at visible wavelengths. Also present are molecular hydrogen, atomic helium, C18O (CO with oxygen as the 18O isotope), CS, NH3 (ammonia), H2CO (formaldehyde), c-C3H2 (cyclopropenylidene) and a molecular ion N2H+ (diazenylium), all of which are relatively transparent. These clouds are the spawning grounds of stars and planets, and understanding their development is essential to understanding star formation.
The form of such dark clouds is very irregular: they have no clearly defined outer boundaries and sometimes take on convoluted serpentine shapes. The largest dark nebulae are visible to the naked eye, appearing as dark patches against the brighter background of the Milky Way like the Coalsack Nebula and the Great Rift. These naked-eye objects are sometimes known as dark cloud constellations and take on a variety of names.
In the inner outer molecular regions of dark nebulae, important events take place, such as the formation of stars and masers.
As molecular clouds dark nebula are part of molecular cloud complexes.
Dark nebula form in the night sky apparent dark cloud constellations.
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An emission nebula is a nebula formed of ionized gases that emit light of various wavelengths. The most common source of ionization is high-energy ultraviolet photons emitted from a nearby hot star. Among the several different types of emission nebulae are H II regions, in which star formation is taking place and young, massive stars are the source of the ionizing photons; and planetary nebulae, in which a dying star has thrown off its outer layers, with the exposed hot core then ionizing them.
Cosmic dust - also called extraterrestrial dust, space dust, or star dust - is dust that occurs in outer space or has fallen onto Earth. Most cosmic dust particles measure between a few molecules and , such as micrometeoroids. Larger particles are called meteoroids. Cosmic dust can be further distinguished by its astronomical location: intergalactic dust, interstellar dust, interplanetary dust (as in the zodiacal cloud), and circumplanetary dust (as in a planetary ring). There are several methods to obtain space dust measurement.
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The term Milky Way is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλακτικὸς κύκλος (galaktikòs kýklos), meaning "milky circle". From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within.
Explores the characteristics of typical plasmas from interstellar space to solar corona, discussing temperature, number density, collision processes, and properties.
We present a search for extremely red, dust-obscured, z > 7 galaxies with JWST/NIRCam+MIRI imaging over the first 20 arcmin(2) of publicly available Cycle 1 data from the COSMOS-Web, CEERS, and PRIMER surveys. Based on their red color in F277W-F444W (simil ...
Bristol2023
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We present a complete census of all Herschel-detected sources within the six massive lensing clusters of the HST Frontier Fields (HFF). We provide a robust legacy catalogue of 263 sources with Herschel fluxes, primarily based on imaging from the Herschel L ...
Context. The ESA Gaia mission provides a unique time-domain survey for more than 1.6 billion sources with G less than or similar to 21 mag. Aims. We showcase stellar variability in the Galactic colour-absolute magnitude diagram (CaMD). We focus on pulsatin ...