Telescope images yield largest-ever portrait of the night sky

BBC : A colossal picture of the Milky Way galaxy, 10 years in the making, has been created from thousands of individual images captured by two ground-based telescopes developed by the UK. “There are about one billion stars in thereâmdash;this is more than has been in any other image produced by surveys,” said Nick Cross from the University of Edinburgh. Because of the vastness of the image, Cross and colleagues have produced an online interactive tool that allows the user to zoom in to particular areas. The two telescopesâmdash;the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope in Hawaii and the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy in Chileâmdash;view the sky at IR wavelengths, which are much longer than those of visible light. As a result, light that passes through dusty regions of space can reach the telescopes without being scattered out of the line of sight. Astronomers will use data from the project to make new discoveries about the universe, writes Jonathan Amos for the BBC.