One of the largest studies of the Milky Way has been concluded, and has mapped the largest portion of our galaxy yet seen.
The ATLASGAL survey has, over the past few years, been tasked with mapping a large area of cold dust and gasses in the Milky Way in an effort to establish how stars form.
Now, the survey, which has produced over 70 scientific papers, has revealed the largest swathe of the Milky Way, our galaxy, yet seen.
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The project used APEX; the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment telescope, which is used to study the universe in different wavelengths, chiefly between infrared and radio.
Mapping the galaxy will help scientists to understand in which regions stars form.
“œATLASGAS told us where to look, where the interesting regions in our galaxy are. And we can study in detail how these regions collapse and form stars. We can get the kinematic of the gas, how it moves around” Dr Carlos De Breuck, an ESO APEX project scientist said to IFLScience in an exclusive statement.
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