Hey space explorers! 🚀
Did you know that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is filled with dust? 🪐 Not the kind under your bed, but cosmic dust that makes stars look dimmer and redder. Scientists have just created the first-ever 3D map of this interstellar dust! How cool is that?
A brilliant team led by Zhang Xiangyu, a student from China studying in Germany, used super-powerful telescopes to study over 130 million stars. That’s like counting every person in Japan—twice! 🤯
They combined data from China’s LAMOST telescope and the European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory to see where all the dust is in our galaxy. This helps us understand how stars are born and how our galaxy changes over time.
Why is this important? Well, the dust between the stars absorbs and scatters light, making distant stars look dimmer and redder. This effect is called “extinction.” By mapping this dust, scientists can correct their observations and discover even more amazing things in space!
So next time you look up at the night sky, remember there’s a whole world of space dust out there, and now we have a map for it! 🌟
Stay curious, future astronomers!
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
