The Carina Nebula, a dark canvas of art hanging in the blackness of the space. And these vibrant colors reveal what gases nebulae are made of. 

“So for example, if there’s oxygen gas, you get a green glow. If there’s hydrogen gas, you get a red glow. So analyzing the light from a nebula turns out to be very instructive. It tells us what's there. It tells us what the physical conditions are. We can tell how dense it is, how hard it is and what it's made of. We can find a lot about the neighborhood by looking at these clues that come directly from the glowing gas.” 

The gases in these nebulae are glowing at thousands of degrees, but what's the source of the heat. To find out, we need to peer/ deep within.

 

“But of course, the gas and dust is in the way, so it's not so easy. It's a very mysterious part of the galaxy. It is a place we have to use the special tricks to look into.” 

 

Kimberly A. Weaver is an astrophysicist who is familiar with these tricks.   

 

“I’ve got a really neat way to show you this. This is a bag that you can't see through with your eyes, so a normal telescope that looks at optical light could not see through this. In infrared light, a telescope can see through it.  The infrared camera, if I put my hand inside, you can see my hand. I will wiggle my fingers to show you. Can you see the heat from my hand inside the bag? And this is just like a star that's hidden inside a cloud of the gas and dust that infrared astronomers can detect by using the infrared…