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Interstellar molecular clouds which lack obvious evidence of recent star formation, and hence which are observable because their dust grains block the light from background stars, are sometimes called dust clouds. Note that all molecular clouds do contain dust grains, whether or not they also contain stars.
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© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Irvine, W.M. (2014). Dust Cloud, Interstellar. In: Amils, R., et al. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27833-4_461-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27833-4_461-3
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Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27833-4
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