New survey peers through dust to detail 3.32 billion celestial objects in the Milky Way

A survey of the Milky Way has led to3.3 billion celestial objects being unveiled in our galaxy. Astronomers have documented hundreds of billions of stars and nurseries where stars are born during the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey. It captured 21,400 individual exposures over two years.

An image showing the celestial objects was released on Wednesday and includes stars and dust across the Milky Way’s bright galactic disk. The data was shared in a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement.

The data was captured by the Dark Energy Camera, located on the Víctor M. Blanco four-meter Telescope at the National Science Foundation’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The telescopes here are perched at a height of 7,200 feet and can observe the southern sky in great detail across visible and near-infrared wavelengths of light.

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This is the second time that data has been released by the programme since 2017. Both datas cover 6.5 per cent of the night sky. The latest data will help astronomers better map the 3D structure of the galaxy’s dust and stars.

“This is quite a technical feat. Imagine a group photo of over three billion people and every single individual is recognisable,” Debra Fischer, division director of astronomical sciences at the National Science Foundation, said in a statement.

“Astronomers will be poring over this detailed portrait of more than three billion stars in the Milky Way for decades to come. This is a fantastic example of what partnerships across federal agencies can achieve.”

Typically, dark streaks of dust and the galaxy’s spiral arms that lie in the galactic plane obscure the path, make it difficult to observe the plane. The glow from star-forming regions also make it hard to spot the individual brightness of celestial objects.

However, the survey helped astronomers peer through this dust using near-infrared light and a data-processing method.

“One of the main reasons for the success of DECaPS2 is that we simply pointed at a region with an extraordinarily high density of stars and were careful about identifying sources that appear nearly on top of each other," lead study author Andrew Saydjari, a doctoral student at Harvard University and researcher at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, said in a statement.

(With inputs from agencies)

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