The image below shows a breathtaking view of the
core of our galaxy, the Milky Way, as seen by the VISTA telescope from the
European Space Agency. With the naked eye, you’d probably see the center of the
Milky Way—with countless stars and cosmic dust clouds—occupying a small patch
of a few inches.
However, thanks to the VISTA telescope we got one of
the most detail portraits of the Milky Way EVER produced which has allowed
astronomers to catalog a staggering 84 million stars. After seeing this image,
ask yourself.. are we alone in the Milky Way? The above image is just a small,
reduced—thumbanil version of the original image which has a mind-boggling resolution
of 108,500×81,500—or if you prefer 9 gigapixels, occupying 24.6
gigabytes.
If for
some reason you want to download the 24.6-gigabyte image you can do so by
clicking here. Check out the ENTIRE 9-gigapixel image—and zoom in on
those stars—by
clicking here. This image is simply too big to be displayed at full
resolution and is best appreciated using the zoom tool.
In order to obtain this image, ESO’s VISTA telescope—which stands for Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy—snapped thousands of images of the sky after which astronomers compiled them into one 9 gigapixel mosaic. The Vista telescope is one of the LARGEST visible and near infrared telescopes on the planet, and it just showed us how cool it really is which this mind-bending image.
The image you are seeing is crystal clear because
the VISTA telescope boasts a stunning infrared camera which enables it to peer
through the dust clouds that obscure the view of other telescopes. In order to
understand how powerful the VISTA telescope really is, here below is a
comparison between an image of the Milky Way—the same image—as seen from an
infrared telescope and a visible telescope.
Pretty amazing right? Just imagine what else is out
there? The Milky Way galaxy is really unique, it’s beautiful and this image
makes you love our cosmic home even more, right? But this image wasn’t taken
just for aesthetic purposes. In fact, this massive image has allowed scientists
and astronomers to identify numerous cosmic objects in space that are worth
researching further.
This image allowed astronomers to identify 84
million stars in the Milky Way. Our cosmic home—the Milky Way—is part of a
supermassive structure interconnected by over 800 galaxies located at around
1000 million light years away. Our
galaxy is part of an intergalactic highway that stretches some 500
million light years across and contains around 100,000,000,000,000,000 Suns,
dubbed by scientists as Laniakea.
Oh and, just a fun fact here, did you know that
astronomers maintain that there are around 500 billion galaxies in the
known universe, which means there are around 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
(5×1022) habitable planets. Astronomers argue that just
inside our Milky Way Galaxy, there are some 400 BILLION STARS.
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