Do you wants CHIPS with that.

When people think of space they often think it is a vacuum, devoid of
any material. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In between the
stars is a large amount of gas and dust called the Interstellar
Medium, or ISM for short. The density and composition of the ISM
varies greatly from one Hydrogen atom per cubic meter to thousands of
complex compounds per cubic meter. The latter usually found in Nebula
being irradiated by nearby hot stars.

Another common misconception is that this gas will be cold, as cold as
space. The wierd thing is that there are some absorption nebula, like
the Coalsack, are indeed cold. They are amongst the coldest places in
the Universe. Yet a lot of this gas is actually very, very hot. It
can be as high as a million Kelvin. The temperature is due to
excitation from nearby stars or shocks from supernovae. That this gas
and dust is such a high temperature means it is in the Plasma state so
it obeys Magnetohydrodynamics.

Our star, the Sun, is in the middle of a large 'bubble' (probably
caused by the supernova that created the gas we formed from). A study
of this local interstellar medium, the local bubble, will help provide
an understanding as to how this plasma behaves in other galaxies and
hence give an insight into galactic dynamics and star formation
processes.

Such a study is being done by CHIPS,
http://chips.ssl.berkeley.edu/science.html

More information on the ISM and it's properties can be found at,

http://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state....tes/HotISM.pdf
http://universe.sonoma.edu/flyers/chips.pdf