Astronomers have unveiled the most detailed low-frequency radio image ever created of our Milky Way galaxy, offering a breathtaking new view of the universe that surrounds us.
The image, assembled by researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), captures the Milky Way as seen from the Southern Hemisphere in dazzling radio “colors,” each representing different wavelengths of radio light.
The work, published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, gives scientists an unprecedented look into the birth, life, and death of stars.
It also provides new insights into the structure and activity of our galaxy, which spans more than 100,000 light-years.
The massive project was led by Ph.D. student Silvia Mantovanini from Curtin University, part of ICRAR.
Over 18 months and 40,000 hours of computing time, Mantovanini and her team used supercomputers at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth to process and merge data from two major sky surveys.
These were the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA (GLEAM) survey, conducted between 2013 and 2014, and its successor, the GLEAM-X (GLEAM eXtended) survey, carried out from 2018 to 2020.
Both surveys used the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope, located on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia at the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory.
This advanced telescope observes the universe at very low radio frequencies, allowing astronomers to see features invisible in regular optical light.
The new image marks a major leap forward compared to the earlier GLEAM image released in 2019.
It offers twice the resolution, ten times the sensitivity, and twice the sky coverage, allowing scientists to study the Milky Way in far greater detail.
With this level of clarity, researchers can now distinguish between regions where stars are forming and areas shaped by the explosive deaths of older stars.
Mantovanini explained that the image vividly reveals the galaxy’s complex structure. “You can clearly identify remnants of exploded stars, shown as large red circles,” she said.
“The smaller blue areas represent stellar nurseries — the birthplaces of new stars.” These contrasts help scientists map how stars evolve, interact, and eventually die, leaving behind gas and dust that fuel the next generation of stars.
The image also provides new ways to study pulsars — dense, rapidly spinning remnants of dead stars that emit beams of radio waves. By analyzing how pulsars shine at different radio frequencies, astronomers hope to uncover how these mysterious cosmic beacons work and where they are located in the galaxy.
Associate Professor Natasha Hurley-Walker, principal investigator of the GLEAM-X survey, emphasized the importance of this milestone.
“This low-frequency image allows us to see enormous astrophysical structures in our galaxy that are nearly impossible to observe at higher frequencies,” she said. “No one has ever published a low-frequency radio image of the entire Southern Galactic Plane before — this is a huge achievement.”
The researchers catalogued around 98,000 radio sources within the Milky Way’s southern region, including pulsars, glowing gas clouds known as H II regions, planetary nebulae, and even distant galaxies beyond our own.
While this image represents the current pinnacle of low-frequency radio astronomy, it’s just the beginning.
The upcoming SKA-Low telescope, part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory, will be built on the same site in Western Australia within the next decade. It will be even more powerful, promising to surpass the GLEAM-X image in both sensitivity and resolution — and to take us one step closer to fully understanding the galaxy we call home.
Source: KSR.
