December 4, 2016
Cosmos Editorial
S. M. CONSIGLIO ET AL., ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS, 2016
Galaxies are often thought of as sparkling with stars, but they also contain gas and dust. Now, a team led by astronomers from the University of California, Los Angeles, has used new data to show that stars are responsible for producing dust on galactic scales.
This research was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Dust is important because it is a key component of rocky planets such as Earth. In the image above, the galaxy II Zw 40, dust (shown in yellow) is strongly associated with clusters of stars (shown in orange).
