360 Degree Portrait of Milky Way Captured by NASA's Spitzer Spacecraft

Thanks to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the more than 2 million images of our galaxy it has taken over the years, researchers have assembled the first 360-degree portrait of the Milky Way.

The composite picture uses infrared images of the Milky Way gathered over the last 10 years, providing an unprecedented look at our galaxy. The image (viewable in full detail here) was unveiled in Vancouver Thursday at a TED conference.

"For the first time, we can actually measure the large-scale structure of the galaxy using stars rather than gas," said Edward Churchwell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of astronomy whose group compiled the new picture. "We've established beyond the shadow of a doubt that our galaxy has a large bar structure that extends halfway out to the Sun's orbit. We know more about where the Milky Way's spiral arms are."

The data required by the image is of equally galactic proportions.

"If we actually printed this out, we'd need a billboard as big as the Rose Bowl Stadium to display it," said Robert Hurt, an imaging specialist at NASA's Spitzer Space Science Center in Pasadena, Calif. "Instead we've created a digital viewer that anyone, even astronomers, can use."

The Milky Way portrait is being considered a sort of victory lap for the Spitzer telescope, which was only expected to be in service for two and a half years after its launch in 2003.

The portrait provides new details about our galactic structure and its contents. Already, scientists have identified more than 200 million never-before-seen objects in the galaxy.

"This gives us some idea about the general distribution of stars in our galaxy, and stars, of course, make up a major component of the baryonic mass of the Milky Way," Churchwell said. "That's where the ballgame is."

More information on the project, known as GLIMPSE360, is available here.