One of the magnanimous subject area of our galaxy has just been completed . TheATLASGAL surveyhas represent a immense swathe of cold dust and gasoline distribution in the Milky Way to empathize how and where stars organise .
The survey has so far produced 70 scientific papers , and in the up-to-the-minute issue , astronomers combine the survey information with observations from the European Space Agency ’s Planck satellite . The paper , which appear inAstronomy & Astrophysics , detailed the location of dense star - forming regions and established a accurate star - formation pace for our galaxy : The milklike Way make 13 stars the flock of the Sun every 10 years .
The undertaking was potential thanks to APEX , the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment scope , in Chile , a forerunner to the modern Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array ( ALMA ) , which is studying the universe at wavelengths between infrared and radio .
Dr. Carlos De Breuck , ESO APEX projection scientist , tell IFLScience : “ We can have elaborated observation of our beetleweed because we are inside it . So we can soar up in the region where stars are born .
“ When we expect at the sky with our own eyes , we see these dark lanes in the Milky Way . These rubble lanes are the place where stars are forming . ”
This comparison shows the central regions of the Milky Way observed at different wavelength . ESO / ATLASGAL consortium / NASA / GLIMPSE consortium / VVV Survey / ESA / Planck / D. Minniti / S. Guisard
To infer how our wandflower has changed and is deepen is very of import to get a consummate nose count of these star - forming regions . The final catalogue covered a 420 - square - academic degree field of sky , more than four times declamatory than the first ATLASGAL survey .
“ It ’s a huge amount of data , ” added De Breuck , “ and its bequest will go well beyond the end of this sight . Theentire ATLASGAL datawas made useable to other astronomers . Everybody from the public can now download the data . It is both beautiful and scientifically useful . ”
Although the ATLASGAL survey is now complete , this is not an end but a beginning . “ There are many affair we can do now . It is a very various sketch . We found many small stocky regions that we could follow up with ALMA , ” say De Breuck .
“ ATLASGAS tell us where to look , where the interesting regions in our galaxy are . And we can contemplate in detail how these realm burst and form virtuoso . We can get the kinematic of the gun , how it go around . ”
The conform to - up observation will not be just in the submillimeter but also in other wavelengths , which will birth a expert understanding of these of import region .
“ [ The different type of observations ] directly illustrate how muscular it is to look at the complemental data point between these different observations . What you see in one wavelength is not directly what you see in another wavelength , ” add De Breuck .
