See 10 terabyte photos of the Milky Way

A survey of the southern sky by the astronomers responsible for the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2) has mapped and described more than 3 billion celestial bodies. The research data has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Some astronomical instruments spy on the outer corners of the universe, while others spy on our neighborhoods and homes.

on historical mappingastronomers were able to observe, map and describe 3.32 billion celestial bodies in our Milky Way.

The mapping was performed by the DECaPS2 program using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, commanded by the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) NoirLab program. ).

Using the Víctor M. Blanco telescope with DECam, the researchers were able to create a file that combined 21,400 individual exposures, creating a 10 terabyte image!

Observing our galaxy is not simple at all. The dust, overlap and brightness of nebulae are factors that create noise in images, preventing the identification of celestial bodies.

However, the DECam installed on the CTIO was able to capture the brightness and surroundings of about 6.5% of the night sky with extreme precision at an angle of 130º.

Also, by capturing the waves at infrared wavelength, some interference factors can be minimized, resulting in a high resolution image.

Thanks to this technological data collection and analysis set, the image is one of the most impressive images ever recorded in our galaxy.

The galactic tapestry can be viewed and you can interact with objects by zooming in on different parts of the mapped plane. By clicking on the different areas, you will see the search data and the specific frame of that area.

It took two years to process the image.and it will take years before all the information can be analysed. The surprising result for astronomers is another step towards getting to know our galaxy.