Seeing the Milky Way in a stunning new light: Spectacular 167-million pixel map of the galactic centre is revealed

Unknown star forming regions near the heart of the Milky Way have been revealed for the first time in a map of the galaxy's cold dense gas.

The map, produced by the Atlasgal project covers an area of sky measuring 140 degrees long and three degrees wide.

It contains a staggering 167 million pixels, making it four times the coverage of the first Atlasgal map, and includes the southern part of the Milky Way which contains the galactic centre for the first time. 

Explore the full image on the European Space Observatory website

The Atlasgal survey took advantage of the unique characteristics of the telescope to provide a detailed view of the distribution of cold dense gas along the galactic plane - where the majority of a galaxy's mass lies - of the Milky Way. A selection of the super high-resolution image is shown. Explore the full-size image on the European Space Observatory website

This region is of particular interest for astronomers as it includes many areas of star formation.

The latest map was built up from 47 separate images, or tiles, taken with the Apex telescope located high on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile, South America.

Data from the European Space Agency's Planck observatory, in orbit, added an extra level of detail to this high-resolution image of the heavens.

While the Planck observatory can image the whole sky, with relatively poor spatial resolution, Atlasgal covers only the plane of the galaxy – but at high angular resolution. 

Combining information from both provides what the astronomers call excellent spatial dynamic range.

Together the telescopes have created the first map of the full area of the galactic plane at submillimetre wavelengths - between infrared light and radio waves.

The three-year project covers 420 square degrees of the sky, with each image tile having a resolution of over 3.5MP.

Eso Apex programme scientist Carlos De Breuck told MailOnline the most important aspect of the project was the four-times better sky coverage and the more uniform depth of information obtained.

The result of combining the tiles is an image of 167 megapixels, tracing the cold dense gas and dust of the Milky Way.

'Atlasgal maps the dust, which traces the hydrogen, but there are many other elements out there, which is why we are following up with other observations using Apex and other telescopes,' said Carlos De Breuck.

The survey focused on radiation with a wavelength of 870 µm (0.87 millimetres).

Atlasgal is the Apex Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy, but Apex is itself an abbreviation of Atacama Pathfinder Experiment. 

This is a radio telescope situated at 5,100 metres above sea level, at the Llano de Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama desert in northern Chile.

This comparison shows the central regions of the Milky Way observed at different wavelengths. The top panel shows submillimetre radiation, between infrared light and radio waves. The second shows the same part of the galaxy in infrared, the third shows near-infrared and the bottom is the view in visible light

The Apex data, at a wavelength of 0.87 millimetres, shows up in red and the background blue image was imaged at shorter infrared wavelengths by the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope as part of the Glimpse survey. The fainter extended red structures come from observations made by ESA's Planck satellite. The right-hand sections reveal the location of each of the horizontal strips within the galaxy

The altitude and dry atmosphere make it a prime site for astronomers.

Alongside Apex on the plateau is Alma, the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array, a state-of-the-art telescope to study light from some of the coldest objects in the universe. 

Alma will be used for follow-up studies of targets identified by Atlasgal.

Both are operated by Eso, the European Southern Observatory, a joint venture of European and South American.