If you've ever had dreams of travelling across the Milky Way with a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey Police Box, then getting hold of a map of the expansive galaxy will definitely guide you.
With the help of a large telescope in the Chilean desert, a team of scientists had created the most complete map of the cold, dense galaxy ever made. Get this: it's not just a map of the Milky Way – it also marks the places where stars are born.
Although a galactic journey through space-time is not yet possible for humans, mapping out the Milky Way satisfies our desire to reach for the stars. At the same time, it expands our current knowledge about the star formation regions in the galaxy. Basically, it's a space nerd's ultimate fantasy.
The Perfect Incubator
The stunning 187-million-pixel map of our home galaxy covers 140 degrees in length and 3 degrees in width of the southern Milky Way.
NASA said the new map is four times more detailed than the previous one. It's also an amalgamation of data collected from different telescopes and satellites throughout decades of observations.
Scientists pieced together data from a telescope called Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), located about 3 miles above sea level in Chile. Red portions of the new map were captured by Apex.
Because the telescope is located in one of the driest regions on Earth, it can map out the southern night sky without any water vapor interferences.
As part of the Apex Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL), the telescope helped researchers trace the particular regions of the southern Milky Way where stars form. The temperatures in these parts are just above absolute zero, making them the perfect incubator for new stars.
Aside from the Apex, scientists also took data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which provided the portions of blue in the background. The faint red structures were taken by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.
A Galactic Thermometer
At the heart of Apex are its instruments. One is called the LABOCA, or the Large Bolometer Camera, which measures the tiny wavelengths of radiation that fall between radio waves and infrared light in the electromagnetic spectrum.
When radiation hits LABOCA, it acts like some kind of thermometer that takes note of even the slightest changes in temperature, which the wavelengths of radiation caused. LABOCA can also detect emission from the cold dark bands of dust and gas that obscure stellar light.
When stellar dust and gas turn really cold, they clump together and start to collapse in on each other. Those breaking up lumps of gas and dust eventually turn into new stars.
A Goldmine Of New Discoveries
Leonardo Testi, a member of the ATLASGAL team, said the project has allowed them to get a revolutionary and transformational glimpse at the dense interstellar medium of the Milky Way.
"The new release of the full survey opens up the possibility to mine this marvelous dataset for new discoveries," said Testi.
Additionally, the ATLASGAL project offers insights into where the next-generation of high-mass clusters and stars are going to form, said Timea Csengeri, who led the work of combining Planck and Apex data.
Scientists hope to use data from the telescopes and satellites to direct them to places worthy of further research, but the new map itself is a spectacular artistic masterpiece.
