Simply Amazing Image : 84 Million Stars

The Light of 84 Million Stars
(Credit: ESO)

From the European Southern Observatory:

Using a whopping nine-gigapixel image from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has created a catalogue of more than 84 million stars in the central parts of the Milky Way. This gigantic dataset contains more than ten times more stars than previous studies and is a major step forward for the understanding of our home galaxy. The image gives viewers an incredible, zoomable view of the central part of our galaxy. It is so large that, if printed with the resolution of a typical book, it would be 9 metres long and 7 metres tall.

It is well worth going to the website to try the zoomable image

And this is just the local neighborhood.  There are moments when the vastness of space is simply overwhelming. Considering the torrents of data coming in from other instruments such as Kepler, which are steadily unveiling the first, scant details about only the visible planets circling other stars,  we are beginning to understand that even the smallest patch of night sky likely contains a stunning array of complex and widely diverse planetary systems just as intriguing as our own.

Kind of makes you want to go exploring.