This video compares a visible light wide-field view (part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2) of the Milky Way’s central regions with a new near-infrared image taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The video starts by showing a visible light image of the Milky Way central regions, filled with vast numbers of stars. A moving slider then reveals that far more stars, hidden behind clouds of dust, are revealed when this region is observed in the near-infrared.
Credit:
ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2 and ESO/Nogueras-Lara et al.. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin and S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard).
Original source