Invisible Galaxies Revealed

www.space.com...

It may not have Superman’s X-ray vision, but for NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope currently in orbit, infrared will do nicely.

The space-based telescope was able to use its infrared eyes to look through a cosmic wall of interstellar dust and find some of the brightest galaxies ever observed. Obscured from the view of visible astronomy tools, the 31 galaxies sit about 11 billion light-years away behind a thick screen of insterstellar dust, the source of which remains a mystery.

One light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 5.8 trillion miles (9.4 trillion kilometers).

This image, an artist’s concept, shows what just one of the many dust-encapsulated galaxies found by Spitzer might appear like in the infrared. Researchers used Spitzer’s infrared-seeking multi-band imaging photometer in conjunction with ground-based observations to pin down the invisible galaxies.

Additional Spitzer observations found signs of silicate dust in 17 of the 31 galaxies, an ingredient for planet formation, researchers said. Since Spitzer’s observations reach back to a time when the universe was just three billion years old, the find marks the furthest back that silicate dust has ever been seen, and may shed light on how planetary systems evolved in galaxies, they added.

-- SPACE.com Staff

even though this picture is an artist’s concept, it is still very cool...

galaxies hiding in dust clouds???

this is new news to me...

Wow very new news to me. I didn't even know areas of dust that big existed. Dust that covers a whole galaxy....thats millions of light years of dust...maybe even billions. I'd like to know where it came from.

No, not necessarily, since the dust lies probably just a few hundreds or thousands of light years away, while the galaxy is billions...

Ever tried to hide a whole house that's far away in the distance with just your hand between your eyes and it?

Originally posted by SpookyVince
No, not necessarily, since the dust lies probably just a few hundreds or thousands of light years away, while the galaxy is billions...

Ever tried to hide a whole house that's far away in the distance with just your hand between your eyes and it?

Ohhhh I get it now. Haha, thank you for explaining that SpookyVince I probably wouldn't of figured that out. And yes, I've done that with my hand and a house . Thank you for explaining that it makes more sense.

You're welcome. It is often the obvious that we don't see, and the easy that we don't get at first...