Astronomers have published a gigantic infrared map of the Milky Way containing more than 1.5 billion objects ― the most detailed one ever made. Using the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope, the team monitored the central regions of our Galaxy over more than 13 years. At 500 terabytes of data, this is the largest observational project ever carried out with an ESO telescope.

This gigantic dataset [1] covers an area of the sky equivalent to 8600 full moons, and contains about 10 times more objects than a previous map released by the same team back in 2012. It includes newborn stars, which are often embedded in dusty cocoons, and globular clusters –– dense groups of millions of the oldest stars in the Milky Way. Observing infrared light means VISTA can also spot very cold objects, which glow at these wavelengths, like brown dwarfs (‘failed’ stars that do not have sustained nuclear fusion) or free-floating planets that don’t orbit a star.

Check out more on the ESO site here.