When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, S. Payne-Wardenaar, L. McCallum et al (2025) Astronomers have unveiled the ...

This image captures a richly detailed section of the Milky Way, showcasing a tapestry of stars and glowing nebulas. Against a black cosmic backdrop, countless white stars sparkle like scattered ...

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 ...

This is part of the first 3D map of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Over 200 thousand objects are included in the map, which was made up of images from a telescope in the Canary Islands that took ...

Voluminous clouds of cosmic dust permeate our galaxy, but only recently has software allowed detailed observations of the stuff at scale. Reading time 2 minutes Astronomers at the Max Planck Institute ...