Using the VISTA telescope at the European Southern Observatory, a team of astronomers has been observing the central parts of our Milky Way Galaxy for more than 13 years.
The first observation dates back to 2010. The entire project resulted in 500 terabytes of data. This makes it the largest observing project ever undertaken using a telescope from ESO, the 16-nation European Union organization that surveys the universe from an observatory in Chile.
The entire map is too large to display in one image. They include a range of celestial objects, from new stars in their “dust cocoons” to so-called globular star clusters, a collection of stars orbiting a galaxy.
By scanning the same corners of the universe multiple times, the team was able to map not only the objects themselves, but also how they move and potential fluctuations in brightness.
Long overdue
“This is a project we have been looking forward to for years,” says Lene Dessen, professor of astronomy at KU Leuven, in De Wereld Today. “The maps we have now received are incredibly detailed, containing millions of stars.”
“In 2012, we already received a preliminary map of the Milky Way (the galaxy in which our solar system is located, and therefore also the Earth, ed.). But now they have made observations for 420 nights. They have got all of this light combined to create one detailed map, “Which gives us a lot of new information about our Milky Way galaxy.”
This map, created by the same team, contains ten times more information than the one in 2012.
“The Milky Way is several hundred thousand light-years across. It’s gigantic. But it’s not the only one. We live in one of these galaxies, but there are hundreds of thousands of others. We’ve now mapped our home a little better and not just by sight.” In addition to the optical light we see with our eyes, the VISTA telescope looks at infrared light, like the infrared light in a microwave oven.
Right through space dust
This would not be possible without infrared light. “Infrared light is much longer than our optical light. It is much more sensitive to cold objects, allowing us to detect many more planets.”
“It can also easily see through dust. If you don’t clean in the house, you’ll get clouds of dust. It’s there, but we can’t see through it. Well, if we look with an infrared camera, it will look like this: This dust There are also not many dust particles in the galaxy, so VISTA can look much deeper into our galaxy.
By the way, we shouldn’t think of that map as a classic map. “You see small and large stars and a lot of planets. But you also see brown dwarfs. These are failed stars, stars that were not heavy enough to start their own nuclear reactor.”
“You also see stars that have come too close to the black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. If the stars get too close, they could be sucked in or knocked out. If they get knocked out, their speed will be very high.” “We also discovered them in large numbers on the map.”
