“Please Pardon Our Dust” with Doug Finkbeiner

Many beautiful astronomical images result from starlight being absorbed or scattered by interstellar dust. These processes make for pretty pictures, but also confound astronomers as they try to see through the dust. New efforts are creating a 3-D map of cosmic dust within our galaxy by measuring the colors of nearly 1 billion stars. The resulting data visualizations are not only picturesque, but also crucial to the star-mapping mission of the Gaia satellite and the science of the upcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. Generating this dust map required years of work – but it beats wiping off shelves and knick-knacks! Original music by Mark C. Petersen, Loch Ness Productions. Used with permission. Animations used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.