The outlines of our galaxy can be seen as we look out into the distance.
Astronomers have created an animation based on data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission and other space science data sets. The work was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, after it was presented at the National Astronomy Meeting.
The animation shows the cumulative build-up of dust looking from Earth's local neighborhood to 13000 lightyears away from the center of our solar system. The concentration of dust along the plane becomes clear when close by. There are two windows above and below the plane.
The distribution of dust clouds is related to the formation and death of stars. In revealing regions where there is no dust and we can have a clear view of the universe beyond, the maps are important.
The data from the 2MASS All Sky Survey was used to create the animation. The tools are part of a suite of applications designed to support studies of stars and galaxies as well as lunar exploration.
"State-of- the-art machine learning and visual analytics have the power to greatly enhance scientific return and discovery for space science missions, but their use is still relatively novel in the field of astronomy," said Albert Zijlstra, of the University of Manchester and the EXPLORE project.
We have an increasing wealth of information to mine, beyond the scope of what humans could process in a lifetime, thanks to a constant stream of new data. Tools like the ones we are developing for EXPLORE are needed to support scientific discovery, such as by helping us to characterize properties within the data, or to pick out the most interesting or unusual features and structures.
More information: R. Lallement et al, Updated Gaia-2MASS 3D maps of Galactic interstellar dust, Astronomy & Astrophysics (2022). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202142846 Journal information: Astronomy & Astrophysics
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