How many stars can you count when searching for it Clear sky at night? Not nearly as good as Chile’s Dark Energy Camera. Scientists have revealed a region of our Milky Way galaxy that contains 3.32 billion celestial bodies, including billions of stars.
The National Science Foundation’s National Research Laboratory for Optical and Infrared Astronomy (NOIRLab) is working on DECam as part of the Observation Program in Chile. The new astronomical data set is the second release of the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2). NOIRLab called it “The largest list ever compiled,” she said in a statement on Wednesday.
Casual visitors can enjoy NOIRLab Low-resolution version of the survey It gives an overall look. For those who want to dive into the details, This web viewer It allows you to dig deeper into the data.
This vast region of the Milky Way contains billions of celestial objects as part of the Dark Energy Camera’s aircraft survey.
DECaPS2 / DOE / FNAL / DECam / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / M. Jumani and Dr. De Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)
The camera used optical and infrared wavelengths of light to detect stars, star-forming regions, and clouds of gas and dust. Debra Fisher of the NSF says: “Imagine a group photo of more than 3 billion people, each individual recognizable. Astronomers will study this detailed picture of more than 3 billion stars in the Milky Way for decades to come.”
The survey looks at the disk of the Milky Way, which appears as a bright band running along with the image. It is full of stars and dust. There’s so much that it’s hard to know what’s going on. The stars overlap. Dust hides the stars. Sorting everything out requires careful data handling.
“One of the main reasons for DECaPS2’s success is that we simply identified a region of unusually high density of stars and were careful to identify sources that appeared to be overlapping,” said the Harvard-educated researcher. Andrew CezzariPrincipal author An article regarding the study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal this week.
Billions of stars may seem like a crazy number, but they are just a small drop in the galactic bucket. NASA estimates There are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. The new survey covers only 6.5% of the night sky as seen from the Southern Hemisphere.
DECaPS2 is an epic multi-year project with 21,400 unique exposures and 10 terabytes of data. Description of NOIRLab The “Amazing Astronomical Data Bar” survey is appropriate. We’ve never seen the Milky Way before. He is beautiful and humble.
