But the VISTA telescope gave us one of the most accurate depictions of the Milky Way ever, enabling astronomers to catalog an astounding 84 million stars.

Think about it after seeing this image. Do we inhabit the Milky Way alone? The image above is simply a thumbnail of the original image, which has a staggering resolution of 108,500 by 81,500 pixels, or 9 gigapixels, taking up 24.6 gigabytes.

You can click here to download the 24.6-gigabyte image if you need to for any reason. Click here to view the 9-gigapixel image in its entirety and zoom in on those stars. The zoom function is best used to fully appreciate this image because it cannot be presented in its original resolution.

The VISTA telescope, which stands for Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, was used by ESO to capture hundreds of photographs of the sky, which were then assembled into a single 9 gigapixel mosaic by astronomers. One of the largest visible and near-infrared telescopes on Earth, the Vista telescope recently proved to us how awesome it really is with this mind-blowing image.

The image you are seeing is crystal clear because the VISTA telescope boasts a stunning infrared camera which enables it to peer through the dust clouds that obscure the view of other telescopes. In order to understand how powerful the VISTA telescope really is, here below is a comparison between an image of the Milky Way—the same image—as seen from an infrared telescope and a visible telescope.

Really great, huh? Just consider what else is available. The Milky Way galaxy is really distinctive and lovely, and this image only makes you adore it even more, am I right? However, this picture wasn’t taken purely for artistic reasons. In reality, this enormous image has made it possible for astronomers and scientists to detect a number of cosmic objects in space that merit further study.

Astronomers were able to identify 84 million Milky Way stars thanks to this photograph. The Milky Way is a component of a supermassive structure made up of around 800 galaxies that are connected by a distance of roughly 1000 million light years. Scientists have named Laniakea, an intergalactic highway that spans around 500 million light years and has about 100,000,000,000,000,000 Suns, to be the home of our galaxy.

Oh, and here’s a fun fact: according to astronomers, the known universe has about 500 billion galaxies, which translates to about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (51022) habitable planets. According to astronomers, our Milky Way Galaxy alone contains 400 BILLION STARS.

Soucre: news.sci-nature.com