Wide Field Imager view of part of the bulge of the Milky Way

This star-filled picture was taken using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. It shows a patch of sky in the direction of the centre of the Milky Way and includes many thousands of stars that form part of the Milky Way bulge. Very careful comparisons of such images, taken eleven years apart, have been used to measure the motions of bulge stars and help unravel the mysteries of the central parts of the galaxy.