Milchstrasse
Wandbild MILKY WAY # 42-51066343
19 Mar 2010 --- Mosaic of the Scorpius and Sagittarius area in the southern Milky Way, around the center of the Galaxy seen from Atacama Lodge, Chile (latitude -23°). Area extends from M6 and M7 star clusters at right to M16 and M17 nebulae at left. M8 Lagoon Nebula is at center, the Large Sagittarius Star Cloud is right of center, and the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud is left of center. --- Image by © Alan Dyer, Inc/Visuals Unlimited/Corbis
03 Jun 2008 --- "The center section of an 800,000 image panorama of the inner Milky Way, from the Spitzer Space Telescope. The swaths of green represent organic molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are illuminated by light from nearby star formation, while the thermal emission, or heat, from warm dust is rendered in red. Star-forming regions appear as swirls of red and yellow, where the warm dust overlaps with the glowing organic molecules. The blue specks sprinkled throughout the photograph are Milky Way stars. The bluish-white haze that hovers heavily in the middle panel is starlight from the older stellar population towards the center of the galaxy. This is a three-color composite that shows infrared observations from two Spitzer instruments. Blue represents 3.6-micron light and green shows light of 8 microns, both captured by Spitzer's infrared array --- Image by © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Corbis
18 Jun 2001 --- Milky Way. Mosaic of photographs of the Milky Way, the spiral galaxy in which our solar system lies. Our Sun is believed to be around two-thirds of the way out from the centre in a small spiral arm. Galactic Centre lies at the centre of the image in the constellation Sagittarius. This is where the bulge of stars in the Milky Way is at its greatest, tapering away on either side. The image runs around the whole of the sky, so our view away from Galactic Centre is seen both at far left and at far right. Interstellar dust obscures much of the Galaxy's central axis. The Milky Way is thought to be about 120,000 light years across and to contain over 100 billion stars. --- Image by © Eckhard Slawik/Science Photo Library/Corbis
A 360 degree night panorama lit by moonlight, taken from the boardwalk out to Pyramid Island on Pyramid Lake in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. To the southwest, the waxing gibbous moon is setting. At right of centre, the Boardwalk leads to Pyramid Island itself, with Pyramid Mountain behind it. Right of the island is the Big Dipper. To the right of the image, to the northeast, there’s a weak aurora display. The Milky Way is faintly visible in the moonlit sky overhead.
section of the Milky Way galaxy
An enormous section of the Milky Way galaxy created from a mosaic of images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus are featured in this 1,000-square degree expanse. These constellations, named after an ancient Queen and King of Ethiopia in Greek mythology, are visible in the northern sky every night of the year as seen from most of the United States. To the unaided human eye, Cassiopeia is easily recognizable by the five bright stars that make up its "W" shape. However, WISE observed infrared light, where the sky takes on a very different appearance. The bright stars of the constellations fade into obscurity amongst the backdrop of millions of other stars revealed by WISE. Cool clouds of dust that fill the space between the stars in the Milky Way glow in infrared light and tell us more about the story of how stars are born, and how they die. Within this image are dozens of dense clouds, called nebulae. Many of the nebulae seen here are places where new stars are forming, creating bubble like structures that can be dozens to hundreds of light-years in size. The process of star formation within these giant clouds has been likened to fireworks, celebrating the birth of new generations of stars. But the death of stars is also seen in the remnants of a supernova explosion that was witnessed by the astronomer Tycho Brahe in 1572 AD. This remnant is located about one-fifth of the way from left of center, and about one-sixth of the way up from the middle of the image. The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent light emitted at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light from 12 and 22 microns, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust. This image is a mosaic of thousands of individual frames from WISE, combined first into 442 interlocking tiles before re-projecting and stitching them into the final picture. This was done for each of the four WISE wavelengths, totaling nearly 30 billion pixels in the interlocking tiles. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA