The Milky Way in Stars and Dust
			
		
		
			Credit & Copyright:   
Serge Brunier
		
		
			The disk of our Milky Way Galaxy is home to hot nebulae, cold dust, and billions of stars. 
This disk can be seen from a dark location on Earth as a 
band of diffuse light 
across the sky.  
This band crosses the sky in dramatic fashion in the 
above series of wide angle sky exposures from 
Chile.   
The deepness of the exposures also brings to light a vast network of complex 
dust filaments.  
Dust is so plentiful that it obscures our 
Galaxy's center in visible light, 
hiding its true direction until 
discovered by other means early last century.  
The Galactic Center, though, is 
visible above as the thickest part of the disk.  
The diffuse glow comes from billions of older, fainter stars like 
our Sun, 
which are typically much older than the dust or any of the nebulae.  
One particularly photogenic area of darkness is the 
Pipe Nebula visible above the Galactic Center.  
Dark dust is not the 
dark matter than dominates our Galaxy -- that 
dark matter remains in a form 
yet unknown.