Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2024

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2024 Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile, who led the overall project. This record-breaking map comprises 200,000 images taken by ESO’s VISTA ― the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. Lo- cated at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, the telescope’s main pur- pose is to map large areas of the sky. The team used VISTA’s infrared camera VIRCAM, which can peer through the dust and gas that per- meates our galaxy. It is therefore able to see the radiation from the Milky Way’s most hidden places, opening a unique window onto our galactic surroundings. This gigantic dataset covers an area of the sky equivalent to 8600 full moons, and contains about 10 times more objects than a previous map released by the same team back in 2012. It includes newborn stars, which are often embedded in dusty cocoons, and globular clusters ― dense groups of millions of the old- est stars in the Milky Way. Observ-