Where are Stars Born?
New stars are formed in clouds of gas and dust that are in outer space between the stars.
If you're picturing a dense fog cloud, think again. Typically in a dust cloud, you would have to search long and hard to find a single dust grain in a space the length of a football field on each side.
And then the dust grain is very small. About 4000 dust grains could fit across a sucker stick.
But dust clouds in space are incredibly large. A typical cloud contains about 8 million trillion trillion trillion trillion tiny dust particles.
The picture on the left shows a dust particle from outer space, which researchers have named Florianus. The dust particle is so small we could not see it with only our eyes. It was collected by a high-flying airplane in our own atmosphere.
Dust grains like this become part of new stars.