By studying very dense clouds of dust and gas, astronomers
have been able to find lots and lots of baby stars, very young
stars, brand new. These babies are very hard to find by looking
with visible light, that is, the kind of light our eyes can see,
because of all the dust surrounding them-- stars are born within
dense cocoons of dust and gas, and so are hidden to human eyes.
But by using infrared light, we can see
deep within these dust clouds, to find these baby stars. Here
is an infrared picture of the Orion Nebula, showing many hidden
baby stars.
All of the space beasts that I've shown you so far--the
nebulae, these babies, and the left-over pieces of the supernova--
they are all pretty close neighbors to us.... They are all in
our own Galaxy, the Milky Way.




