The purest panoramic view of the Milky Way ever

Taking two million snapshots over the course of ten years, the Spitzer Space Telescope created the cleanest, 360-degree panoramic, mosaic of our galaxy. The image was unveiled at the TEDActive 2014 Conference in Vancouver, Canada, as fruits of Spitzer’s GLIMPSE360 project, concluding an endeavor that began in 2003 when Spitzer launched.

The Infrared view of the galaxy presents a stark contrast to the visible light image, where much of the detail is obfuscated by dust and other space debris. Unlike visible light rays, infrared rays from stars as far as 100,000 light years away is able to penetrate most of this matter, depicting more than half of our galaxy’s stars as well as the majority of the star formation activity. 

Image via Caltech, click here for the full resolution image.
 
By contrast, the visible light image of our galaxy seen below can only depict the light of stars within 1,000 years.

 
The definite image is zoomable, and enables scientists to draft more accurate maps of stars and the central spiral structure in order to gain a better understanding of the galaxy. For example, certain dust formations reveal a higher concentration of carbon than was previously expected.

Space debris is scattered throughout the void as a result of collapsing stars going supernova and exploding, spreading their elemental contents and radiation in massive tendrils of dust. When gravity finds a way to collect this dust after millions of years, a new star is born; red colored clouds are actually indicative of star formation. The blue haze located in the center of image represents concentrated starlight from stars too far away to individually distinguish. Meanwhile, the dark filaments sticking out amidst the bright clouds are not actually empty spaces, but a lower, weaker light from faraway stars that’s unable to penetrate light years of space dust.

The GLIMPSE360 project is scheduled to continue its work for years to come, providing generations of astronomers with images to help them chart the galaxy for decades. The Milky Way mosaic only accounts for three percent of the night sky.

Via Caltech