Large red giant stars and low mass red dwarfs dominate in the near-infrared. The near-infrared is also the region where interstellar dust is the most transparent to infrared light. Many of the hotter stars in the visible image have faded in the near-infrared image. The near-infrared image shows cooler, reddish stars which do not appear in the visible light view. These stars are primarily red dwarfs and red giants.
Red giants are large reddish or orange stars which are running out of their nuclear fuel.
They can swell up to 100 times their original size and have temperatures which range from 2000 to 3500 K. Red giants radiate most intensely in the near-infrared region. Red dwarfs are the most common of all stars. They are much smaller than our Sun and are the coolest of the stars having a temperature of about 3000 K which means that these stars radiate most strongly in the near-infrared. Many of these stars are too faint in visible light to even be detected by optical telescopes, and have been discovered for the first time in the near-infrared. As we enter the mid-infrared region of the spectrum, the cool stars begin to fade out and cooler objects such as planets, comets and asteroids come into view.