Question: Did you find anything suspicious with the dust?

Bella Boulderstone answered on 11 Jun 2019:

The dust is tricky! The dust that I study, we had to find out what it was made up of which turns out to be graphite – just like in pencils! This dust is in tiny grains and is sublimating (turning from a solid into a gas) before it funnels into the accretion disc (which feeds the black hole). It turns out that there are other types of dust in the object that I study, the space donut around the accretion disc and black hole. They turn from a solid into a gas at much lower temperatures, it was suspicious for a long time because we weren’t sure why we could only see one type of dust closest in, but we learned that this is because graphite is one of the hardiest types of dust and is able to survive at hotter temperatures.

Dust also is a pain for other astronomers because it can also hang around in space as big clouds. It doesn’t do very much but it does obscure the view to what’s behind it. A lot of people want to learn more about the dust clouds in the universe because then they can try and see behind it better!