This image, focusing on the central few degrees of the Milky Way in infrared light, is the culmination of years of observations taken with the ESO’s VISTA instrument, the world’s most powerful wide-field and high-resolution infrared astronomy telescope. (ESO/VVV SURVEY/D. MINNITI; ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: IGNACIO TOLEDO, MARTIN KORNMESSER)

This 9-Gigapixel Zoomable Image Is Humanity’s Best All-Time View Of The Galactic Center

The center of the galaxy is mostly obscure in visible light. But thanks to the world’s most powerful infrared telescope, we can see inside.

Throughout history, the sight of the Milky Way has fascinated and mystified skywatchers worldwide.

This image is a single projection of Gaia’s all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighboring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. The map shows the total brightness and color of stars observed by the ESA satellite in each portion of the sky between July 2014 and May 2016. However, even with Gaia, the galactic center remains largely obscured, as it cannot penetrate the dust lanes of our galaxy in optical wavelengths. (ESA/GAIA/DPAC)

In visible light, the dark dust lanes redden and obscure billions of stars lurking behind them.

The all-sky infrared map of the sky from NASA’s WISE spacecraft. As spectacular as this image is, it cannot achieve the resolutions or exposure times or cover as many independent wavelengths as the ground-based VISTA observatory can. (NASA / JPL-CALTECH / UCLA, FOR THE WISE COLLABORATION)

Space-based observatories, like NASA’s Wise and Spitzer, have seen through the dust, revealing hidden stars and gas.

This infrared view of the plane of the Milky Way, taken from space by NASA’s Spitzer as part of the GLIMPSE galactic survey, is one of the most ambitious observing projects ever undertaken, taking a decade to complete. At longer wavelengths than are visible from the ground, the gas of different temperatures from our galaxy is highlighted as never before. (NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN)

NASA’s Spitzer, in particular, constructed the most comprehensive map of the galactic plane ever seen.