(ORDO NEWS) — Astronomers have published a giant survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains 3.32 billion celestial objects.
Possibly the largest such catalog to date. Data for this unprecedented study was obtained using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) built at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
The Milky Way galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, twinkling star-forming regions, and towering dark clouds of dust and gas. Visualizing and cataloging these objects for study is a titanic task.
However, the recently released Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2) astronomical dataset shows a staggering number of objects in unprecedented detail.
The DECaPS2 study, which generated over 10 terabytes of data, identified about 3.32 billion objects.
This unprecedented collection was captured by the DECam instrument mounted on the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco telescope.
The review of DECaPS2 was made in the optical and near infrared wavelengths.
The data set is available to the entire scientific community and is hosted by NOIRLab’s Astro Data Lab, which is part of the Community Science Center and data center.
Most of the Milky Way’s stars and dust are located in its disk, a bright band that contains spiral arms.
While this abundance of stars and dust creates beautiful images, it also makes it difficult to see the plane of the galaxy.
Dark swirls of dust absorb starlight and completely obscure fainter stars, while light from diffuse nebulae thwarts any attempt to measure the brightness of individual objects.
Another problem arises from the sheer number of stars that can overlap in an image and make it difficult to separate the stars from their neighbors.
Despite the difficulties, astronomers have delved into the galactic plane to better understand our Milky Way.
By observing at near-infrared wavelengths, they were able to see behind much of the light-absorbing dust.
The researchers also used an innovative data processing approach that allowed them to better predict the background behind each star.
This helped mitigate the effect of nebulae and crowded star fields on such large astronomical images, ensuring that the final catalog of processed data is more accurate.
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