Astronomers have captured the most detailed infrared map ever of the Milky Way

A team of astronomers has published a giant infrared map of the Milky Way containing more than 1.5 billion objects, the most detailed ever, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reported on Thursday.

“We have made many discoveries that have changed the view of our galaxy forever,” Dante Minetti, an astronomer at Andres Bello University in Chile, who led the overall project, said in a statement.

The map includes 200,000 images taken by the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope (VISTA) located at the Paranal Observatory in Which In Chile, its main goal is to map large areas of the sky.

This is the largest observing project ever undertaken using a telescope Whichwith 500 terabytes of data collected after observing the central regions of our galaxy milky waymore than 13 years ago.

This massive data set covers an area of ​​the sky equivalent to 8,600 full moons, and contains approximately 10 times more objects than a previous map published by the same team of astronomers in 2012.

Includes The stars Neonates (which are often embedded in dust-laden environments) and globular clusters (dense clumps of millions of The stars Older than milky way).

3D rendering of interior areas milky way

The observations, made between 2010 and 2023, and spanning a total of 420 nights, allowed the group of scientists not only to determine the locations of these objects, but also to track how they move and whether their brightness changes.

Drawing of astronomers The stars Its brightness changes periodically and can be used as cosmic rulers to measure distances. This gave them an accurate 3D view of the interior of the surface milky way Which was previously hidden by dust.

Also track the team The stars super speed, The stars Fast-moving creatures launched from the central area of milky way After a close encounter with the massive black hole lurking there.

The team of astronomers used the VIRCAM infrared camera installed on the VISTA system, which can peer through the dust and gas that permeates the galaxy. milky wayWhich means it is able to see radiation from the most hidden places in the galaxy.

VISTA’s ability to observe in the infrared range means that this telescope can also detect very cold objects, which shine at these wavelengths, such as brown dwarfs (The stars “Failed” planets that do not have sustained nuclear fusion) or free planets that do not orbit a planet star.

(With information from EFE)