Cosmic Dust - Some "dusty" Clouds in The Universe

Some "dusty" Clouds in The Universe

Our solar system has its own interplanetary dust cloud; extrasolar systems too.

There are different types of nebulae with different physical causes and processes. One might see these classifications:

  • diffuse nebula
  • infrared (IR) reflection nebula
  • supernova remnant
  • molecular cloud
  • HII regions
  • photodissociation regions
  • Dark Nebula

Distinctions between those types of nebula are that different radiation processes are at work. For example, H II regions, like the Orion Nebula, where a lot of star-formation is taking place, are characterized as thermal emission nebulae. Supernova remnants, on the other hand, like the Crab Nebula, are characterized as nonthermal emission (synchrotron radiation).

Some of the better known dusty regions in the universe are the diffuse nebulae in the Messier catalog, for example: M1, M8, M16, M17, M20, M42, M43 Messier Catalog

Some larger 'dusty' catalogs that you can access from the NSSDC, CDS, and perhaps other places are:

  • Sharpless (1959) A Catalogue of HII Regions
  • Lynds (1965) Catalogue of Bright Nebulae
  • Lunds (1962) Catalogue of Dark Nebulae
  • van den Bergh (1966) Catalogue of Reflection Nebulae
  • Green (1988) Rev. Reference Cat. of Galactic SNRs

at

  • The National Space Sciences Data Center (NSSDC)
  • CDS Online Catalogs

Read more about this topic:  Cosmic Dust

Famous quotes containing the words dusty, clouds and/or universe:

    We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.
    Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)

    Heaven has its business and earth has its business: those are two separate things. Heaven, that’s the angels’ pasture; they are happy; they don’t have to fret about food and drink. And you can be sure that they have black angels to do the heavy work like laundering the clouds or sweeping the rain and cleaning the sun after a storm, while the white angels sing like nightingales all day long or blow in those little trumpets like they show in the pictures we see in church.
    Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)

    It is a delicious thing to write, whether well or badly M to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.
    Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)