ASTRO-110 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Horsehead Nebula, Spiral Galaxy, Supernova Remnant
Document Summary
Concentrations of dust grains often obscure the light from nebulae behind them, creating beautiful structures. Ex. in horsehead nebula, the eagle nebula. Other structures: the stars that power ionization nebulae sometimes have very strong winds and create bubbles. Supernovae remnants can also be hot enough to emit light. The interstellar medium: the same dust and gas that"s opaque to visible light and obscures our seeing in the galactic plane is mostly transparent to radio waves. Radio waves allow us to explore the interstellar medium to a much greater extent. The milky way: the wavelengths of infrared radiation are also too long to be obscured by dust and gas. Although infrared images are at lower resolution than optical, they give us a much clearer picture (not as good resolution) A multi-spectral view of the galaxy gives us the most information initially considered to be the universe (we lived in a disk of stars)
