Sooty Stars

Image courtesy NASA

Two bright stars light up clouds of "soot" in the outer edge of our Milky Way galaxy, as seen in an infrared picture from the Spitzer Space Telescope released July 28.

The false-color image can help astronomers study our galaxy's fog of compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are found on Earth in car exhaust and charcoal grills. In space, such compounds form in the clouds of matter where stars are born.

Spitzer has been collecting pictures of the far reaches of the Milky Way as part of the GLIMPSE360 project, which builds on a previous survey of the galaxy's center.