Taking a GLIMPSE at our Milky Way

Do you want to take a look at our own galaxy, the Milky Way?

Head on to and view the 390,000 x 6000 pixels or 180 x 2.75 feet mosaic of our Milky Way galaxy. The photos were taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope which was launched August 25, 2003.

GLIMPSE or Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire surveyed the inner Milky Way and the photo mosaic were taken from 111,000 different points on the sky. Photos were taken in infrared. A total of 444,000 images were created.

The GLIMPSE survey resulted in the cataloguing of 72 MILLION stars. It also resulted in seeing newly forming massive stars, finding new star clusters. It also allowed the studying in detail of several individual star forming regions, discovering a globular cluster and a whole lot more.

For those who like watching the heavenly bodies, I suggest you look at the full resolution mosaic image at . The GLIMPSE/MIPSGAL image viewer lets you zoom in close to things such as the remnant from a star that went supernova, the Black Widow nebula, and the birth of new stars.

Mac users might opt to choose Firefox over Safari when using the GLIMPSE/MIPSGAL viewer.

The image of the Milky Way and the multitude of stars contained therein is humbling. Makes you feel really small.