by Staff Writers Austin TX (SPX) Oct 10, 2012 Dust is an
annoyance in everyday life, but an important building block of
stars and planets. As such, astronomers need to understand how
cosmic dust forms over time - it's an integral step in figuring
out the evolution of galaxies, and the stars and planets within
them. To better understand cosmic dust, University of Texas at
Austin assistant professor Steven Finkelstein and colleagues are
pursuing one of the largest Hubble Space Telescope projects to
date, studying dust in thousands of galaxies over a wide range
of cosmic time. They published some early results in a paper led
by Finkelstein in a recent issue of The Astrophysical Journal
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/756/2/164]. "We don't yet
understand how galaxies build up their dust reservoirs,"
Finkelstein said. "We know that dust builds up through time, but
exactly when the formation of dust begins is unknown."
Finkelstein is part of a large team of astronomers working to
rectify that knowledge gap. Th