
Astronomers have created two new maps of the Milky Way revealing the fingerprint of our galaxy in unprecedented detail.

The first map features bold loops and swirls of colour, which form when charged particles spiral around magnetic fields.

The second pinpoints the billions of stars in the Milky Way, and its neighbouring Magellanic Clouds, by measuring their distance and velocities.

Together, the maps could help astronomers better understand the process of star formation.

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A full sky map made using the Planck satellite. Loop 1, marked by the dashed ellipse, is the yellow feature above centre, shading to purple, and the purple arc below centre. The colours represent the angle of the magnetic field and the brightness represents the signal strength

The loops in the first map were discovered more than 50 years ago. One of these loops, dubbed Loop 1, accounts for a massive portion of our sky.

Remarkably, astronomers are still very uncertain about its distance – it could be anywhere between 400 and 25,000 light years away.

The full sky map also shows a massive dust ring around the Lambda Orionis nebula, which is estimated to be around 200 light years across.

The dust ring was spotted by the Planck telescope, and astronomers say it is the first time the ring has been seen in this way.

The Planck satellite, launched in 2009 to study the ancient light of the Big Bang, has also given us maps of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, in microwaves.

‹ Slide me › The outline of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, and of its neighbouring Magellanic Clouds, in an image based on housekeeping data from the Gaia satellite, indicating the total number of stars detected every second in each of the satellite's fields of view. Brighter regions indicate higher concentrations of stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer stars are observed

An image of the ring around the star Lambda Orionis. Green represents the emission from interstellar plasma and the blue is emission arising from electrons moving in magnetic fields

The second is based on data from Esa’s Gaia satellite, which scans the sky to measure positions and velocities of a billion stars with unprecedented accuracy.

For some stars it also determines their speed across the camera’s sensor.

This information is used in real time by the attitude and orbit control system to ensure the satellite’s orientation is maintained with the desired precision.

These speed statistics are routinely sent to Earth, along with the science data, in the form of housekeeping data.

They include the total number of stars, used in the attitude-control loop that is detected every second in each of Gaia’s fields of view.

It is the latter – which is basically an indication of the density of stars across the sky – that was used to produce this uncommon visualisation of the celestial sphere.

Brighter regions indicate higher concentrations of stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer stars are observed.

The plane of the Milky Way, where most of the Galaxy’s stars reside, is the brightest portion of this image, running horizontally and especially bright at the centre.

Darker regions across this broad strip of stars, known as the Galactic Plane, correspond to dense, interstellar clouds of gas and dust that absorb starlight along the line of sight.

Gaia is currently making the largest, most precise 3D map of our Galaxy, providing a crucial tool for studying the formation and evolution of the Milky Way.