New Map of Milky Way Shows Star-Forming Regions of Galaxy

 The map called ATLASGAL (The APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy) provides a detailed look of the cold, dense gas floating throughout Milky Way from which stars are born.

The detailed map has been made with the help of the APEX telescope in Chile using the data from the Southern Hemisphere of the Galactic Plane. European Southern Observatory scientist Carlos De Breuck said that the new map gives them an opportunity to find star-forming regions and study their properties like size of the gas clumps.

Breuck has termed it to be the first image captured at the submillimeter wavelengths between infrared light and radio waves. The image is said to be larger and better detailed than its first version. “Seen in visible light, these regions of the universe are often dark and obscured due to the dust, but they shine brightly in the millimeter and submillimeter part of the spectrum”, affirmed the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The mapping effort has been put in by the development team for many years between July 2007 and November 2010. The survey also involved other data. After checking the map, one would see blue in the image captured at shorter infrared wavelengths by the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope as part of the GLIMPSE survey.

Breuck said that when it comes to observing the Milky Way, the Southern Hemisphere is much better because the Galactic Center, a rotational center of the Milky Way, is quite high in the sky. Leonardo Testi from ESO said that the new map has opened up the possibility to explore the database for new discoveries. Many researchers are already using ATLASGAL data to plan for a detailed ALMA follow-up.

"Atlasgal provides exciting insights into where the next generation of high-mass stars and clusters form," said Timea Csengeri from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.

"Atlasgal has allowed us to have a new and transformational look at the dense interstellar medium of our own galaxy, the Milky Way," said Leonardo Testi from the European Southern Observatory.

"The new release of the full survey opens up the possibility to mine this marvellous dataset for new discoveries. Many teams of scientists are already using the Atlasgal data to plan for detailed Alma follow-up."

"APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment telescope, is located at 5100 meters above sea level on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile's Atacama region. 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 plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The new image includes most of the regions of star formation in the southern Milky Way," according to a recent Business-Standard report.

In a report published by the NDTV News, the map - which was combined with previously collected data - is the result of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). The APEX (Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment - there are a lot of acronyms involved) studies the southern sky at submillimeter wavelengths - between infrared light and radio waves.

"Seen in visible light, these regions of the Universe are often dark and obscured due to the dust," the European Southern Observatory's website explains. "But they shine brightly in the millimeter and submillimeter part of the spectrum. This wavelength range is also ideal for studying some of the earliest and most distant galaxies in the Universe, whose light has been redshifted into these longer wavelengths."