Highlights of the most detailed infrared map of the Milky Way

This collage highlights a small selection of regions of the Milky Way imaged as part of the most detailed infrared map ever of our galaxy. Here we see, from left to right and top to bottom: NGC 3576, NGC 6357, Messier 17, NGC 6188, Messier 22 and NGC 3603. All of them are clouds of gas and dust where stars are forming, except Messier 22, which is a very dense group of old stars.

The images were captured with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) and its infrared camera VIRCAM. The gigantic map to which these images belong contains 1.5 billion objects. The data were gathered over the course of 13 years as part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey and its companion project, the VVV eXtended survey (VVVX).