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See the Most Detailed Photo of the Milky Way's Heart Ever Taken in Visible Light, Which Will Help Astronomers Hunt for Exoplanets
Key takeaways
- The new image of the center of the Milky Way, which is packed with stars ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA, CFHT.
- Released on June 24 by the European Space Agency (ESA), the sparkling snapshot contains more than 60 million stars, just a fraction of the 100 billion or so estimated to exist in our galaxy.
- The picture was captured by ESA’s Euclid space telescope, which launched in 2023 to map part of the night sky and uncover the mysterious influences of dark matter and dark energy on the universe.
The new image of the center of the Milky Way, which is packed with stars ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA, CFHT. Image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay) A new image puts the Milky Way’s densely packed center into perspective.
Released on June 24 by the European Space Agency (ESA), the sparkling snapshot contains more than 60 million stars, just a fraction of the 100 billion or so estimated to exist in our galaxy. It’s the largest and most detailed photo of the Milky Way’s middle ever taken in visible light, and it could help scientists identify planets far beyond the solar system, called exoplanets
The picture was captured by ESA’s Euclid space telescope, which launched in 2023 to map part of the night sky and uncover the mysterious influences of dark matter and dark energy on the universe. But on one day last March, astronomers put the instrument’s powerful technology to a different use.