18 January 2023
Gargantuan survey of the Milky Way
© DECaPS2; DOE; FNAL; DECam; CTIO; NOIRLab; NSF; AURA
An ambitious new survey of the Milky Way’s galactic plane has revealed 3.32 billion cosmic objects in stunning detail. The enormous celestial catalogue, possibly the largest of its type, was built using data from the Dark Energy Camera at the Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory in Chile, which is operated by the National Science Foundation (NSF). “Imagine a group photo of over 3 billion people and every single individual is recognisable,” Debra Fischer, division director of astronomical sciences at the NSF, said. “Astronomers will be poring over this detailed portrait of more than 3 billion stars in the Milky Way for decades to come.”