Photos of Billions of Stars in the Milky Way Shared

When we look at the sky at night, we can see thousands of stars in our galaxy. Unfortunately, the number of stars we can see is decreasing day by day due to increasing light pollution, depriving us of this magnificent view. An image shared by scientists a few days ago reveals the gigantic size of our galaxy.

The researchers achieved this result using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile. It is stated that this large data set contains 3.32 billion celestial bodies, including billions of stars in the Milky Way. Although this number is huge, the objects in the study contain only a small part of our galaxy.

Here is just a small part of the dataset

You can click on this link to examine the project in detail and access the entire data set.

The US National Science Foundation’s National Optical Infrared Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) operates DECam as part of an observatory project in Chile. The new astronomical dataset is also called DECaPS2 because it is the second version of the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey. DECaPS2 took 2 years to complete and over 10 terabytes of data were generated.

NOIRLab also described their work as “arguably the largest catalog ever compiled”. Considering that there are hundreds of billions of stars, giant gas and dust clouds in our galaxy, we can say that cataloging these objects is a huge and challenging task. According to the statements, the camera used optical and infrared wavelengths of light to detect star forming regions and dust clouds.

Debra Fischer from the National Science Foundation said in her statements, “Imagine a photograph of more than 3 billion people standing together and each individual being recognizable. “Astronomers will study this detailed portrait of more than 3 billion objects in the Milky Way over the coming years.”