Nasa has unveiled an astounding new image of our galactic neighbourhood – a new star atlas for the entire universe.

The atlas includes a catalogue of the entire infrared sky, over half a billion stars, galaxies and more captured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

Edward Wright, WISE principal investigator at UCLA, said: “Today, WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical community.” Wright began working on the WISE mission in 1998.

Made up of more than 2.7 million images taken at four infrared wavelengths of light, the new image captures everything from nearby asteroids to distant galaxies.
via Huffington Post

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