APEX Turns its Eye to Dark Clouds in Taurus (zoom)

Observations from the APEX telescope, of part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud, show a sinuous filament of cosmic dust more than ten light-years long. The cosmic dust grains are so cold that observations at submillimetre wavelengths, such as these made by the LABOCA camera on APEX, are needed to detect their faint glow.

The video begins with a wide-field view of the sky, before zooming into the Taurus Molecular Cloud region, about 450 light-years from Earth. Dark clouds of cosmic dust grains obscure the background stars at visible wavelengths.

At the end of the zoom, the submillimetre-wavelength observations from the LABOCA camera on APEX reveal the heat glow of the dust grains, shown here in orange tones. The observations cover two regions in the cloud, which are known as Barnard 211 and Barnard 213. In them, newborn stars are hidden, and dense clouds of gas are on the verge of collapsing to form yet more stars.