Infrared light allows astronomers to peer deeply into the disk of our own Milky Way galaxy, seeing areas that are obscured by dust in visible light.
Looking at an otherwise normal patch of the Milky Way that falls within the Southern constellation Crux, we see a complex array of dust that is strewn through interstellar space, along with some regions that are furiously forming stars.
Including near and mid infrared light we see both our Galaxy's stars as well as the patchy clouds of dust and the bright areas that are forming stars. The view shifts subtly when pushing to longer, far infrared wavelegths. New, unseen regions of cold dust, falling outside the warmer regions, become visible in red. Some of the desest and coldest filaments of dust, opaque in the first image, themselves glow in the second.
