Astronomers have published a gigantic infrared map of the Milky Way containing more than 1.5 billion objects - the most detailed one ever made. Using the European Southern Observatory's VISTA telescope, the team monitored the central regions of our Galaxy over more than 13 years. At 500 terabytes of data, this is the largest observational project ever carried out with an ESO telescope.
The image shows images of a small selection of regions of the Milky Way imaged as part of the most detailed infrared map ever of our Galaxy. Here we see, from left to right and top to bottom: NGC 3576, NGC 6357, Messier 17, NGC 6188, Messier 22 and NGC 3603. All of them are clouds of gas and dust where stars are forming, except Messier 22, which is a very dense group of old stars.
The VVV and VVVX surveys were led by professor Dante Minniti, from the UNAB and principal investigator at the Center for Astrophysics and Related Technologies (CATA), together with professor Philip Lucas, from the University of Hertfordshire (UH), in the United Kingdom. Dr Dirk Froebrich from the University of Kent, UK, participated in these megaprojects, that had different stages that lasted many years, starting in 2005: planning, carrying out observations, analyzing data and obtaining results. This last step includes exploring and publishing.
For more information see the original ESO press release, which can be found here.