As you know, our galaxy is called the Milky Way. Although
we know far more about it than about other galaxies, it has been difficult to
catalogue all the stars contained within it, particularly those located in the
galactic center. The stars in this region are packed tightly together into a
distended bulge that is obscured by dust. Luckily, infrared telescopes can see
through that dust. Enter the VISTA telescope and
a team of cosmologists led by Roberto Saito of Pontificia Universidad
Catolica de Chile, Universidad de Valparaiso and The Milky Way Millennium
Nucleus, Chile.
Between 2010 and 2011, the VISTA telescope was used to
observe the Milky Way bulge in five different passbands (ranges of wavelengths).
This data was compiled to make up the Variables in the Via Lactea
(VVV), a public survey of the Milky Way. Saito and his colleagues used the VVV to create the following
stunning panorama:
Caption: This striking view of the central parts of the
Milky Way was obtained with the VISTA survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal
Observatory in Chile. This huge picture is 108,500 by 81,500 pixels and contains
nearly nine billion pixels. It was created by combining thousands of individual
images from VISTA, taken through three different infrared filters, into a
single monumental mosaic. These data form part of the VVV public survey and
have been used to study a much larger number of individual stars in the central
parts of the Milky Way than ever before. Because VISTA has a camera sensitive
to infrared light it can see through much of the dust blocking the view for
optical telescopes, although many more opaque dust filaments still show up well
in this picture.
Credit: ESO/VVV Consortium Acknowledgement: Ignacio Toledo.
Saito, R., Minniti, D., Dias, B., Hempel, M., Rejkuba, M., Alonso-García, J., Barbuy, B., Catelan, M., Emerson, J., Gonzalez, O., Lucas, P., & Zoccali, M. (2012). Milky Way demographics with the VVV survey Astronomy & Astrophysics, 544 DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201219448
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