Despite its name, interstellar dust isn’t just particles lying in space, glowing in the light, waiting to be swept away by the cosmic vacuum cleaner. These are tiny solid particles floating in space and are composed of carbon, silicates, ice and other metals. As a byproduct of interstellar evolution, they can lead to the formation of cosmic bodies such as planets.

A recent press release from the University of Tokyo in Japan discusses the progress made in acquiring new information about interstellar dust. Asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, stars in the later stages of their lives, are known producers of interstellar dust and emit light that varies widely.

New results from old data

Kengo Tachibana, a PhD student at the University of Tokyo Institute of Astronomy, and his team analyzed the varying density of dusty AGBs to match the fluctuations of the produced dust. This is particularly important because further research into this pathway could lead to a better understanding of our origins.

Before the famous James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) took to the skies, infrared space telescopes AKARI (Japanese light) and WISE (Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer) explored space. Although they stopped working for five years, the depth of the information they gathered was so great that astronomers are still studying them and making new observations.

“We study stars, and the infrared light from them is an important source of information that helps us unravel their secrets,” Tachibana said. Said. “Until recently, most of the IR data came from very short-term surveys due to the lack of advanced proprietary platforms. But missions like AKARI and WISE have allowed us to do long-term studies. This means we can see how things might change over longer periods of time and what those changes might mean. “We have recently turned our attention to a particular class of stars known as asymptotic giant branches, which are interesting because they are the main producers of interstellar dust,” he added.

Tachibana continues to debate what research should focus next. “Our latest research has pointed us in the right direction. We have found that the light from dusty AGBs varies with long-term infrared observations for periods of more than a few hundred days. Also, spherical dust shells created and then ejected by these stars have dust concentrations that change with changes in the brightness of the stars.” “Of the 169 dusty AGBs studied, the dust concentrations around them will overlap regardless of their duration of variation. So we’re pretty sure they’re related.”

The team now wants to investigate the physical mechanisms behind cosmic dust generation and hope that the completion of the University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory, the University of Tokyo’s large-scale ground-based telescope project in Chile, will lead to more significant discoveries.