The Milky Way is our own galaxy and by piecing together images, NASA has created a glimpse of the entire Milky Way. Take a look at this video and think about the following questions: Why look at the Milky Way as a panorama? How do stars and space dust show up differently on the images? How does the data help with future missions to observe space?
Source: Catching a GLIMPSE of the Milky Way | NASA Spitzer | YouTube
Welcome home! This is our Milky Way galaxy as you've never seen it before - courtesy of NASA's Spitzer Space Telecscope and the Galactic Legacy Midplane Survey Extraordinaire or GLIMPSE 360 project. 10 years in the making, this is the clearest infrared panomara of our galactic home ever made. When we look around the sky in visible light, we see stars in every direction, but it turns out some directions are more interesting than others. Most of the stars we can easily see are less than 1,000 light years away, but the Mily Way is over 100,000 light years across. If we could fly in intergalactic space and view it from the outside, we would see it's mostly a flat disc like a stellar pancake. From our vantage piont in the disc, you can see that most of the galaxy falls within a thin strip. That's why the GLIMPSE 360 panorama, which covers only 3 percent of the sky captures over half of all the stars in the galaxy's disc and over 90% of regions where stars are forming. In this panorama, we see stars shining brightest at the shorter infrared wavelength (rendered in blue), while dust clouds light up at longer wavelengths (seen in red). Moreover, infrared light can penetrate the dusty smog that fills our galaxy, letting us see wonders that are hidden in visible light. Take the time to explore the GLIMPSE 360 panorama, and you can find countless regions of star formations - both small and large. Dusty bubbles blown into interstellar space and distant galaxies obscured behind the dusty disc of our own galaxy. The GLIMPSE data have already helped astronomers create the most precise map of the large bar of stars running through our galaxy's center as illustrated in this artist's concept and is helping to determine the location and extent of its spiral arms. Moreover, this data will provide a roadmap for astronomers using the upcoming James Webb space telescope, which will be able to make more detailed infrared observations but cannot map out large areas like Spitzer. You're seeing the results of over 2.5 million snapshots that Spitzer obtained during 172 days worth of observing time spread out over a decade. This rendering represents the first time the entire data set has been carefully stitched into a single image that beautifully captures everything from the brilliant core of the Milky Way to its faintest outer edge. Anyone, even astronomers can explore the data using online digital viewers that let you zoom in and out to take it in at every scale.