Related topics: galaxies · stars · infrared light

Tuning the wavelength of fluorescent carbon tubes

Carbon is not just the most important element for life, it also has fascinating properties of its own. Graphene—a pure carbon sheet just one atom thick—is one of the strongest materials. Roll graphene into a cylinder ...

Image: Saturn's north pole

Reflected sunlight is the source of the illumination for visible wavelength images such as the one above. However, at longer infrared wavelengths, direct thermal emission from objects dominates over reflected sunlight. This ...

Image: Reflection nebula NGC 1999

This spooky sight, imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, resembles fog lit by a streetlamp swirling around a curiously shaped hole – and there is some truth in that. While the 'fog' is dust and gas lit up by the ...

NASA's Webb Telescope to witness galactic infancy

Scientists will use NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to study sections of the sky previously observed by NASA's Great Observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope, to understand the ...

Nanostructures taste the rainbow

Engineers at Caltech have for the first time developed a light detector that combines two disparate technologies—nanophotonics, which manipulates light at the nanoscale, and thermoelectrics, which translates temperature ...

Image: Star formation on filaments in RCW106

Stars are bursting into life all over this image from ESA's Herschel space observatory. It depicts the giant molecular cloud RCW106, a massive billow of gas and dust almost 12 000 light-years away in the southern constellation ...

Image: Interstellar filaments in Polaris

Just as the new calendar year begins, and with it a feeling of new beginnings, so this network of dust and gas shows a portion of sky where star birth is yet to take hold.

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