Today in the Milky Way: Cloudy Skies
Adam Block of the UA’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter brings us a rare view of the clouds wafting through our Milky Way in this Astronomy Picture of the Day.
In silhouette against the Milky Way’s faint starlight, its dusty molecular clouds likely contain raw material to form hundreds of thousands of stars, prompting astronomers to eagerly search the clouds for telltale signs of star birth.
This telescopic close-up looks toward the region at a fragmented Aquila dark cloud complex identified as LDN 673, stretching across a field of view slightly wider than the full moon.
For this image selected by NASA as the June 29 Astronomy Picture of the Day, astrophotographer Adam Block of the University of Arizona’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter remotely operated the 32-inch Schulmann Telescope to peer into the vast chasms of gas and dust wafting through the Milky Way, exposing for about 15 minutes at a time during several nights in April and May. (more…)