To get this photo the scientists brought together over 700 images from different telescopes, mostly with the telescope APEX, which is located on earth in the Atacama desert in Chile, and the space telescope Planck. Thanks to the Apex telescope was able to image the southern part of our galaxy (Apex's photos in a red color ), while Planck had photographed the northern part (blue color).
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This impressive image creates a complete view of the Milky Way, including the mysterious Galactic Center. In this area is still undergoing processes of star formation, and in its properties it differs significantly from other parts of our galaxy. It is the star forge, literally.
The galactic center is only visible in the infrared range, because a large number of cosmic dust and gas around it does not transmit the light coming from existing stars.
From the Earth we are seeing the Galaxy from inside in the cut, in the form of bright hazy bands. But this band (strip) is actually a spiral that extends from the galactic center to the edge of our galaxy, spinning more and more, because according to the laws of the cosmos galaxy is expanding.
All this huge spiral is the milky Way! The diameter of our galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years, 1 trillion kilometers. Inside it is approximately 300 billion stars. The force of gravity of the milky Way is holding in its thrall 14 other smaller galaxies. They revolve around us and sooner or later will be absorbed.
