The Milky Way Project Talk

Distinguishing between IRDCs and background

  • curiousepic by curiousepic

    How best to distinguish IRDCs from areas where the green fog simply dissipates into the blackness of background space? Is there a certain type of star that will not appear through/in front of dark nebulae?
    I'm often sure that an object is a nebula when it has an easily distinguishable brownish-shaded curve with a sharp edge, showing its three dimensional shape, but I don't think all nebulae have this feature.

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  • _Nightcrawler_ by _Nightcrawler_

    Easiest way is that if there seems to be a lot of IRDCs, it is probably one giant interconnected one, which means that when it trails off were the background is green it probably continues (and therefore there is fewer stars in that area). They seem to mostly just want the ones on top of the green because it is an IRDC opposed to just space.

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  • PattyD by PattyD

    We are looking at the galactic plane which is a busy, populated place. I can't think of a picture that had black spaces that weren't IRDCs.

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