NASA Releases Stunning 360-Degree View of Milky Way
- 10 years ago
New technology that allows people to get a 360 degree panorama view of the Milky Way galaxy had its debut at the TEDActive Conference in Vancouver, Canada before it will be made available as an educational tool.
New technology that allows people to get a 360 degree panorama view of the Milky Way galaxy had its debut at the TEDActive Conference in Vancouver, Canada before it will be made available as an educational tool.
"Welcome home, this is our Milky Way galaxy as you’ve never seen it before. Courtesy of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galactic Legacy Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire." [NASA]
Robert Hurt, an imaging specialist at NASA's Spitzer Space Science Center in Pasadena, California is quoted as saying: “If we actually printed this out, we'd need a billboard as big as the Rose Bowl Stadium to display it. Instead, we've created a digital viewer that anyone, even astronomers, can use.”
"You’re seeing the result of over 2 and a half million snapshots Spitzer obtained during a hundred and seventy two days worth of observing time spread out over a decade. This rendering represents the first time the entire data set has been carefully stitched into a single image that beautifully captures everything from the brilliant core of the Milky Way to its faintest outer edge."
This is reportedly the most accurate map of the galaxy that has ever been created, and shows that the Milky Way is larger than previous studies had estimated, with over 200 million stars added to the view of the known galaxy.
New technology that allows people to get a 360 degree panorama view of the Milky Way galaxy had its debut at the TEDActive Conference in Vancouver, Canada before it will be made available as an educational tool.
"Welcome home, this is our Milky Way galaxy as you’ve never seen it before. Courtesy of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galactic Legacy Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire." [NASA]
Robert Hurt, an imaging specialist at NASA's Spitzer Space Science Center in Pasadena, California is quoted as saying: “If we actually printed this out, we'd need a billboard as big as the Rose Bowl Stadium to display it. Instead, we've created a digital viewer that anyone, even astronomers, can use.”
"You’re seeing the result of over 2 and a half million snapshots Spitzer obtained during a hundred and seventy two days worth of observing time spread out over a decade. This rendering represents the first time the entire data set has been carefully stitched into a single image that beautifully captures everything from the brilliant core of the Milky Way to its faintest outer edge."
This is reportedly the most accurate map of the galaxy that has ever been created, and shows that the Milky Way is larger than previous studies had estimated, with over 200 million stars added to the view of the known galaxy.