noirlab_noirlab2027b October 27th, 2020
Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA/STScI, W. Clarkson (UM-Dearborn), C. Johnson (STScI), and M. Rich (UCLA)
This image of a region near the center of the Milky Way galaxy covers 0.5 by 0.25 degrees on the sky (an area about twice as wide as the full Moon) and contains over 180,000 stars. The image captures a portion of our galaxy about 220 by 110 light-years across. It was taken with the Dark Energy Camera on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. By studying the brightnesses of these stars at different wavelengths of light, astronomers were able to determine how many heavy elements they contain, which is related to their formation history.
Provider: NOIRLab
Image Source: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2027b/
Curator: NSF's NOIRLab, Tucson, AZ, USA
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
Providers | Sign In