Milky Way Panorama

All-Sky Milky Way Panorama 2.0 is a digital compilation of over 3,000 images comprising the highest resolution digital panorama of the entire night sky yet created. Interactive zoom version. Credit & Copyright: Axel Mellinger (Central Mich. U) Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific 121, 1180-1187 (2009).

Infrared Astronomical Satellite's View of the Sky

Nearly the entire sky, as seen in infrared wavelengths and projected at one-half degree resolution, is shown in this image, assembled from six months of data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, or IRAS. The bright horizontal band is the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, with the center of the galaxy located at the center of the picture. (Because of its proximity, the Milky Way dominates our view of the entire sky, as seen in this image. IRAS data processed to show smaller regions of the sky, however, reveal thousands of sources beyond the Milky Way.) The colors represent infrared emission detected in three of the telescope's four wavelength bands (blue is 12 microns; green is 60 microns, and red is 100 microns). Hotter material appears blue or white while the cooler material appears red. The hazy, horizontal S-shaped feature that crosses the image is faint heat emitted by dust in the plane of the solar system. Celestial objects visible in the photo are regions of star formation in the constellation Ophiucus (directly above the galactic center) and Orion (the two brightest spots below the plane, far right). The Large Magellanic Cloud is the relatively isolated spot located below the plane, right of center. Black stripes are regions of the sky that were not scanned by the telescope in its first six months of operation. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Galactic Center

New Vista of Milky Way Center Unveiled

A dramatic new vista of the center of the Milky Way galaxy from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory exposes new levels of the complexity and intrigue in the Galactic center. The mosaic of 88 Chandra pointings represents a freeze-frame of the spectacle of stellar evolution, from bright young stars to black holes, in a crowded, hostile environment dominated by a central, supermassive black hole.

The diffuse X-ray light is from gas that has been heated by stellar explosions, outflows powered by the central supermassive black hole and winds from massive stars.

The thousands of point sources are produced by normal stars feeding material onto compact, stellar remnants: black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs.

Credit: NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al.

Milky Way Panorama (dive in...)

ESO unveils an amazing, interactive, 360-degree panoramic view of the entire night sky. The first of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project — a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO’s observing sites in Chile — has just been released online. The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world. ... [Full Press Release]

Credit: Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier

The Gamma-Ray Sky

This view from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is the deepest and best-resolved portrait of the gamma-ray sky to date. The image shows how the sky appears at energies more than 150 million times greater than that of visible light. Among the signatures of bright pulsars and active galaxies is something familiar -- a faint path traced by the sun. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

Update: Wednesday, October 28, 2009, Fermi Telescope Caps First Year With Glimpse of Space-Time
This view of the gamma-ray sky constructed from one year of Fermi LAT observations is the best view of the extreme universe to date. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration
In this illustration, one photon (purple) carries a million times the energy of another (yellow). Some theorists predict travel delays for higher-energy photons, which interact more strongly with the proposed frothy nature of space-time. Yet Fermi data on two photons from a gamma-ray burst fail to show this effect, eliminating some approaches to a new theory of gravity. The animation link below shows the delay scientists had expected to observe. Credit: NASA/Sonoma State University/Aurore Simonnet