The Milky Way’s central region in visible light and near-infrared

This video compares a visible light wide-field view (part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2) of the Milky Way’s central regions with a new near-infrared image taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The video starts by showing a visible light image of the Milky Way central regions, filled with vast numbers of stars. A moving slider then reveals that far more stars, hidden behind clouds of dust, are revealed when this region is observed in the near-infrared.