If you want to explore the Milky Way without take to go into space , then look no further thanGLIMPSE360 , an unbelievable Modern interactional web site that allows you to take a tour of the milky manner with the click of a button . This is all thanks to a squad of scientists at theUniversity of Wisconsin - Madison , who used over a whopping two million images gather by NASA ’s Spitzer Space telescope to allow us to be able to do this . This scope was launched into blank space in 2003 , and is still going inviolable , though it was only meant to last 2 and a one-half age .
The image collected were used to generate an amazing 360 degree view the Milky Way , the helical galaxy within which our solar scheme lie , looking through a piece of the astronomic plane . The Milky Way is some 100,000 light years in diameter and stop up to 400 billion stars , and possibly a like routine of planets .
The Spitzer scope takes infrared pictures of space since interstellar rubble obscures ikon ingest using seeable light . The resultant role have been unbelievable ; not only have the images provide unexampled information on astronomic structure , but more than 200 million objects have now been added to our map of the milky agency that were previously unknown . The leader of the group at the U of W - Madison who put these images together , Edward Churchwell , says " We ’ve launch beyond the shadow of a uncertainty that our galaxy has a large barroom complex body part that extends halfway out to the sun ’s orbit . We be intimate more about where the Milky Way ’s spiral weapon system are . " Churchwell ’s chemical group have been compiling and analysing information collected from the Spitzer scope for over a decade in a undertaking called GLIMPSE ( Galactic Legacy Infrared Midplane Survey Extraordinaire ) .
Alongside giving us new insights into the Milky Way , the results have also bring up some puzzling motion . For model , the task reveal that interstellar blank space is fill up with a gas pedal made from complex , aromatic ( benzene mob containing ) hydrocarbons , suggest that atomic number 6 is far more abundant in space than originally believed . The image are also being used in theMilky Way Project , whereby citizens can dredge through these infrared pictures to win better selective information on star formation and what lies inside our galaxy . There ’s evidently going to be a lot more exciting data point that can be pull in out from these prototype to work up up an even bigger and comprehensive mental picture of the Milky Way ; it ’s for sure not over yet .
