Scientists have captured a beautiful image in unprecedented detail of the vast Milky Way galaxy, of which our own solar system is a part.
The stunning image is the largest ever obtained by the specialist telescope in Chile called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (Alma) radio telescope, according to the group behind the project.
The picture not only serves to stir the public imagination of outer space but is also incredibly important for understanding our own origins as a planet, said Steven Longmore, the principal investigator and a professor of astrophysics at Liverpool John Moores University.
“The conditions at the center of our galaxy – the extreme temperatures, pressures, and turbulence – are very similar to the conditions in galaxies in the early universe, when most of the stars that exist today were being formed. Those galaxies are so far away that we cannot observe individual stars and planets forming within them, but we can in the center of our galaxy, and that’s what our survey has been able to do,” Longmore said. He has worked with more than 160 scientists over several years on a project called the Alma CMZ Exploration Survey.