A stellar view! Nasa reveals the clearest panorama of the Milky Way ever made



Star-studded panorama is composed of two million infrared images taken over 10 years by Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope

First time the images have been stitched together to form a panoramic view

The mosaic will be used to guide Nasa’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to the most interesting sites of star-formation

It is hard to comprehend the size our galaxy, but now Nasa has created an incredible panoramic view of the Milky Way that you can tour by clicking a button.



The star-studded panorama is made up of over two million infrared images taken over the last decade by the space agency’s Spitzer Space Telescope.



If the image was printed out, a billboard as large as a stadium would be needed to display it, so instead the impressive collection of images can be explored online.

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A panorama from Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope shows us our galaxy's plane all the way around us in infrared light. The 360-degree mosaic consists of more than 2 million snapshots taken in infrared light over 10 years, beginning in 2003 when Spitzer launched

THE SPITZER SPACE TELESCOPE Spitzer is designed to detect infrared radiation, which is primarily heat radiation.



Its highly sensitive instruments allow scientists to peer into cosmic regions that are hidden from optical telescopes, including dusty stellar nurseries, the centres of galaxies and newly forming planetary systems.



The telescope's infrared 'eyes' also allows astronomers see cooler objects in space, like failed stars, extrasolar planets, giant molecular clouds and organic molecules that may hold the secret to life on other planets.



Spitzer was launched on August 25, 2003 and was designed to have a lifespan of at least two-and-a-half years.

Over the past decade Spitzer has taken over two million images of the Milky Way, which have now been stitched together to create the panorama.

It has spent 172 days or 4,142 hours taking pictures of the ‘disk’ or plane of the Milky Way in infrared light.

The zoomable 360° ‘mosaic’ was unveiled at the TEDActive 2014 conference in Vancouver and is part of the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (Glimpse360) project, which is mapping the plane of our galaxy from all directions.

It captures about three per cent of our sky, but because it focuses on a band around Earth where the plane of the Milky Way lies, it shows more than half of all the galaxy's stars.



‘If we actually printed this out, we'd need a billboard as big as the Rose Bowl Stadium to display it,’ said Robert Hurt, an imaging specialist at Nasa's Spitzer Space Science Centre in Pasadena, California.



‘Instead, we've created a digital viewer that anyone, even astronomers, can use.’



The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched in 2003 and has spent more than 10 years studying everything from asteroids in our solar system to the most remote galaxies at the edge of the observable universe.

The centre of the Milky Way galaxy imaged by Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope is displayed on a high-definition 23-foot-wide (7metre) LCD screen at the space agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California

It has spent 172 days or 4,142 hours taking pictures of the plane of the Milky Way in infrared light, but this is the first time that the images have been stitched together to form a panoramic view.



The Milky Way is a flat spiral disk and our solar system sits in the outer third of the galaxy in one of its spiral arms.



When astronomers look towards the centre of our galaxy they see a crowded region packed full of stars and visible-light telescope cannot look very far into the area because the amount of dust increases with distance, blocking visible starlight.



Infrared light, however, travels through the dust and allows Spitzer to view past the galaxy's centre.



‘Spitzer is helping us determine where the edge of the galaxy lies,’ said Ed Churchwell, co-leader of the Glimpse team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.



‘We are mapping the placement of the spiral arms and tracing the shape of the galaxy.’



Using the data from the telescope has enabled astronomers to create the most accurate map of the large central collection of stars that marks the centre of the galaxy, showing that the Milky Way is slightly larger than previously thought.



The data has also revealed that the Milky Way is riddled with bubble structures – cavities around huge stars – which blast wind and radiation into their surroundings.



Experts at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explained that Spitzer can also see faint stars in the ‘back country’ of our galaxy - the outer, darker regions that went largely unexplored before.



‘There are a whole lot more lower-mass stars seen now with Spitzer on a large scale, allowing for a grand study,’ said Barbara Whitney of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, co-leader of the Glimpse team.



‘Spitzer is sensitive enough to pick these up and light up the entire 'countryside' with star formation,’ she added.



The 360 degree view of the Milky Way will be used to guide Nasa’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to the most interesting sites of star-formation, where it will make more detailed infrared observations.