The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released an amazing new image of the Milky Way that captures the galaxy's gas and dust only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero, marking the end of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). The area of the Galactic Plane that is visible from the southern hemisphere is available to see in a picture that was produced by picking up submillimeter wavelengths, a higher level of detail than other recent space surveys.

The new map, created using data gained from the APEX telescope in Chile, covers an area of sky 140 degrees long and three degrees wide, which is over four times the size of the first ATLASGAL release and possesses a higher level of quality as well. The map also utilized data from ESA's Planck satellite, allowing them to detect emissions for a larger area of sky.

"ATLASGAL provides exciting insights into where the next generation of high-mass stars and clusters form. By combining these with observations from Planck, we can now obtain a link to the large-scale structures of giant molecular clouds," Timea Csengeri, who participated in the project, said in a press release.

One of the instruments of APEX crucial to the creation of the new image is the LArge BOlometer Camera (LABOCA), which measures incoming radiation by analyzing the small temperature rises that it stimulates and picks up emissions from the dark, low-temperature dust bands that block stellar light.

"ATLASGAL has allowed us to have a new and transformational look at the dense interstellar medium of our own galaxy, the Milky Way," said Leonardo Testi, a member of the ATLASGAL team. "The new release of the full survey opens up the possibility to mine this marvellous dataset for new discoveries. Many teams of scientists are already using the ATLASGAL data to plan for detailed ALMA follow-up."

The findings were published in the Dec. 23 issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.