Explore the Milky Way with Chromoscope

Visible wavelength (DSS/Wikisky)

The night's sky is full of wonders - and we're not talking just the stars that you can see with your naked eye. You'll want to see it in other wavelengths, too. But since we don't have X-ray vision, this is the next best thing.

We've blogged about Chromoscope before on Neatorama back in 2009, but it's worth revisiting. The Chromoscope project, built by Stuart Lowe, Chris North and Robert Simpson in 2009, lets you move across the Milky Way galaxy and view it in different electromagnetic wavelengths: visible light, gamma-ray, X-ray, Hydrogen alpha, near infrared, far infrared, microwave, and radio.

For examples:

X-ray (ROSAT All Sky Survey)

What are those tears in the galaxy? Don't worry those aren't tears in the space time continuum - those black arcs are gaps in the ROSAT spacecraft survey.

Gamma ray (Fermi All Sky Survey)

Hydrogen alpha (Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper, The Southern H-Alpha Sky Survey Atlas / VTSS / Finkbeiner)

Near infrared

Far infrared (Infrared Astronomical Satellite)

Microwave (Planck Satellite)

Radio (Haslam 408 MHz)

Check it out: Chromoscope | Wondering what you're looking at? This blog post may have the answer.