An infrared dark cloud (IRDC) is a cold, dense region of a

giant molecular cloud A molecular cloud—sometimes called a stellar nursery if star formation is occurring within—is a type of interstellar cloud of which the density and size permit absorption nebulae, the formation of molecules (most commonly molecular hydrogen ...

. They can be seen in

silhouette A silhouette (, ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhouett ...

against the bright diffuse mid-infrared emission from the

galactic plane The galactic plane is the plane (geometry), plane on which the majority of a disk-shaped galaxy's mass lies. The directions perpendicular to the galactic plane point to the galactic poles. In actual usage, the terms ''galactic plane'' and ''galac ...

Discovery

Infrared dark clouds have only been recently discovered in 1996 using the

ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...

and therefore are in need of further research. The

Spitzer Space telescope The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003, that was deactivated when operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicate ...

, created by NASA to detect

infrared radiation Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

, assisted in the location and identification of infrared dark clouds. The highly sensitive telescope was used to analyze the

Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...

and create numerous astronomical surveys at wavelengths that allowed for the detailed analysis of IRDCs. Through the use of

convolutional neural networks A convolutional neural network (CNN) is a type of feedforward neural network that learns features via filter (or kernel) optimization. This type of deep learning network has been applied to process and make predictions from many different type ...

, an IRDC catalog consisting of 18,845 items was created by two astronomers named Jyothish Pari and Joe Hora, who created a computer algorithm which could efficiently scan the images created by the Spitzer telescope’s IRAC camera to find infrared dark clouds.

Importance

Astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

s believe that they represent the earliest stage in the formation of high-mass stars and are therefore of great importance for understanding the star formation process as a whole.

Statistics and Mass

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Infrared Dark Cloud Star formation

Discovery

Importance

Statistics and Mass

See also

References