Finding X-ray Halos to Determine the Compositions of Dense Molecular Clouds

A preliminary study which proposes the use of custom image processing algorithms to find scattered X-ray light around distant sources and use it to deduce the composition of the interstellar medium, hopefully showing that the necessary molecules for life are more common than we expected.
Finding X-ray Halos to Determine the Compositions of Dense Molecular Clouds
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Interstellar dust has long been a lens through which we view our universe, but when it isn’t the subject of our observations, it is, more often than not, a nuisance. But through examining the photons of extragalactic X-ray sources that get scattered by this dust and understanding how certain special properties of the clouds affect this scattering, we realize that we can complement our current knowledge, and we can open the door to more detailed and perhaps more complete analyses of the interstellar and intergalactic media.

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