A tapestry of cold dust (big pic)

[n2doc]

17 March 2010
Giant filaments of cold dust stretching through our Galaxy are revealed in a new image from ESA’s Planck satellite. Analysing these structures could help to determine the forces that shape our Galaxy and trigger star formation.

Planck is principally designed to study the biggest mysteries of cosmology. How did the Universe form? How did the galaxies form? This new image extends the range of its investigations into the cold dust structures of our own Galaxy.

The image shows the filamentary structure of dust in the solar neighbourhood – within about 500 light-years of the Sun. The local filaments are connected to the Milky Way, which is the pink horizontal feature near the bottom of the image. Here, the emission is coming from much further away, across the disc of our Galaxy.

The image has been colour coded to discern different temperatures of dust. White-pink tones show dust of a few tens of degrees above absolute zero, whereas the deeper colours are dust at around –261°C, only about 12 degrees above absolute zero. The warmer dust is concentrated into the plane of the Galaxy whereas the dust suspended above and below is cooler.


Planck's newly imaged region shown in box

more
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMMN9CKP6G_index_0.html

[The Wielding Truth]

1. Aeww... that's amazing. I wonder how it looks to the naked eye.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. To the naked eye

Probably invisible, or "visible" as an obscuring band of darkness.

That's just a hemi-semi-well-educated guess. Most space pictures are printed in false colors to give some idea of the scope of what we're looking at. But the actual view through protoplasm would probably be pretty dull.

--d!

[The Doctor.]

3. Well... protoplasm is always dull...

when it hasn't the imagination to see.

Thankfully, we're looking now at the results of imaginative protoplasm. The Universe is indeed so much more grand with imagination.

[The Wielding Truth]

5. Yes, I was wondering if we would actually be able to see it .And without

the differential coloring, would it still look magnificent? Will we be able, in our human existence, to personally experience these cosmic visions.

[The Doctor.]

4. Wasn't Max into 'small' stuff?

Either way... Thanks for the brilliant eye-mind-soul-candy.