A team of astronomers has released a gigantic infrared map of the Milky Way containing more than 1.5 billion objects, the most comprehensive ever created, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said Thursday.
“We have made several discoveries that have forever changed our view of the galaxy,” astronomer Dante Minnitti of the University of Andrés Bello in Chile, who led the overall project, said in a statement.
The map consists of 200,000 images taken by the VISTA Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope located at the Parnell Observatory. that In Chile, its main purpose was to map large areas of the sky.
It is the largest observing program ever carried out by telescope thatWith over 500 terabytes of data collected after observing the central regions of our galaxy, milky wayFor more than 13 years.
This gigantic data set covers an area of the sky equivalent to 8,600 full moons and contains approximately 10 times more objects than a previous map published by the same team of astronomers in 2012.
including Stars newborns (which are often embedded in a dusty environment) and globular clusters (millions of dense clusters Stars Ancient milky way)
3D view of the internal parts of milky way
A total of 420 nights of observations between 2010 and 2023 allowed the team of scientists to determine not only the locations of these objects, but also track how they move and whether their brightness changes.
Astronomers have mapped Stars Its luminosity changes periodically and can be used as cosmic rulers to measure distances. This gave them an accurate 3D view of the internal parts milky way They were previously covered by dust.
The team also observed Stars high speed, Stars Fast-moving organisms are disconnected from the core milky way After a close encounter with the supermassive black hole lurking there.
The team of astronomers used the VIRCAM infrared camera installed on VISTA, which penetrates dust and gas. milky wayThat means it is capable of seeing radiation from the most hidden places in the galaxy.
VISTA's ability to observe in the infrared range means that the telescope can detect very cool objects, brown dwarfs that shine at these wavelengths (Stars “Failed” planets or free-floating planets without stable nuclear fusion Star.
(with information from EFE)
