26 Facts About Cosmic dust

1.

Cosmic dust, called extraterrestrial dust or space dust, is dust which exists in outer space, or has fallen on Earth.

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2.

Cosmic dust can be further distinguished by its astronomical location: intergalactic dust, interstellar dust, interplanetary dust and circumplanetary dust .

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3.

Cosmic dust contains some complex organic compounds that could be created naturally, and rapidly, by stars.

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4.

Interstellar Cosmic dust particles were collected by the StarCosmic dust spacecraft and samples were returned to Earth in 2006.

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5.

Cosmic dust was once solely an annoyance to astronomers, as it obscures objects they wished to observe.

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6.

When infrared astronomy began, the Cosmic dust particles were observed to be significant and vital components of astrophysical processes.

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7.

For example, cosmic dust can drive the mass loss when a star is nearing the end of its life, play a part in the early stages of star formation, and form planets.

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8.

Interdisciplinary study of Cosmic dust brings together different scientific fields: physics, fractal mathematics, surface chemistry on Cosmic dust grains, meteoritics, as well as every branch of astronomy and astrophysics.

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9.

Cosmic dust can be detected by indirect methods that utilize the radioactive properties of the cosmic dust particles that are very dangerous.

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10.

Cosmic dust can be detected directly using a variety of collection methods and from a variety of collection locations.

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11.

StarCosmic dust grains are solid refractory pieces of individual presolar stars.

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12.

Presently Cosmic dust detectors are flying on the Ulysses, Proba, Rosetta, StarCosmic dust, and the New Horizons spacecraft.

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13.

Infrared light can penetrate cosmic dust clouds, allowing us to peer into regions of star formation and the centers of galaxies.

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14.

StarCosmic dust grains are contained within meteorites, from which they are extracted in terrestrial laboratories.

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15.

StarCosmic dust was a component of the Cosmic dust in the interstellar medium before its incorporation into meteorites.

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16.

StarCosmic dust is a scientific term referring to refractory Cosmic dust grains that condensed from cooling ejected gases from individual presolar stars and incorporated into the cloud from which the Solar System condensed.

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17.

Many different types of starCosmic dust have been identified by laboratory measurements of the highly unusual isotopic composition of the chemical elements that comprise each starCosmic dust grain.

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18.

An important property of starCosmic dust is the hard, refractory, high-temperature nature of the grains.

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19.

The high interest in starCosmic dust derives from new information that it has brought to the sciences of stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis.

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20.

Cosmic dust is made of dust grains and aggregates into dust particles.

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21.

Cometary Cosmic dust resembles interstellar grains which can include silicates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and water ice.

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22.

Those refractory cores are called stardust, which is a scientific term for the small fraction of cosmic dust that condensed thermally within stellar gases as they were ejected from the stars.

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23.

Meteoriticists who study refractory starCosmic dust often call it presolar grains but that within meteorites is only a small fraction of all presolar Cosmic dust.

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24.

Finally, as the Solar System formed many interstellar Cosmic dust grains were further modified by coalescence and chemical reactions in the planetary accretion disk.

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25.

The provenance of the small fraction that is starCosmic dust is quite different; these refractory interstellar minerals thermally condense within stars, become a small component of interstellar matter, and therefore remain in the presolar planetary disk.

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26.

Some larger Cosmic dust catalogs are Sharpless A Catalogue of HII Regions, Lynds Catalogue of Bright Nebulae, Lynds Catalogue of Dark Nebulae, van den Bergh Catalogue of Reflection Nebulae, Green Rev Reference Cat.

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