Presenting the Most Stunning and Accurate Map of the Milky Way

With more than 1.5 billion celestial objects, it is quite simply the most detailed and richest map of the Milky Way in history! It is ten times richer and more precise than the previous map which dated from 2012. This gigantic infrared map is the result of 13 years of observation of the sky by a telescope, from 2010 to 2023, and this represents no less than 500 terabytes of data. In fact, the dataset is too large to be published as a single image, but the catalog of processed data and objects is accessible on the ESO Science Portal.

“We have made so many discoveries that we have forever changed the view of our galaxy,” enthuses Dante Minniti, an astrophysicist at Andrés Bello University in Chile, who led the entire project.

Infrared allows you to see through dust

In total, this map combines 200,000 images taken by the VISTA telescope (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy). Located at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, the telescope's primary goal is to map large areas of the sky. The team used VISTA's VIRCAM infrared camera, which can peer through the dust and gas that permeate our galaxy. It is therefore able to see the radiation coming from the most hidden places in the Milky Way, thus making it possible to discover thousands of new celestial bodies.

photo credit: ESO/VVVX survey This collage highlights a small selection of regions of the Milky Way photographed as part of the most detailed infrared map of our galaxy ever made. From left to right and top to bottom: NGC 3576, NGC 6357, Messier 17, NGC 6188, Messier 22 and NGC 3603. All are clouds gas and dustera owhere stars, with the exception of Messier 22, which is a tr groupvery dense with old stars. @ESO/VVVX survey

This massive dataset covers an area of ​​the sky equivalent to 8,600 full moons and includes infant stars, often embedded in dusty cocoons, and globular clusters, dense groups of millions of the oldest stars in the Path. milky.

More than 400 observations over 13 years

Observing infrared light means this telescope can also spot very cool objects that shine at these wavelengths, such as dwarfs or free-floating planets that don't orbit a star.

By observing each part of the sky repeatedly, the team was able not only to determine the location of these objects, but also to track their movement and contemplate whether their brightness changed.

They thus mapped stars whose brightness changes periodically and which can serve as cosmic rules for measuring distances. This made it possible to obtain a precise 3D view of the interior regions of the Milky Way, which were previously hidden by dust. The researchers also tracked hypervelocity stars, fast-moving stars catapulted from the central region of the Milky Way after a close encounter with the supermassive black hole lurking there.