Views of the Milky Way

In all views shown below, the center of the Milky Way is in the middle of the image and they are views of the entire sky, though distortions are seen on the edge (sort of like the distortions seen on a map of the Earth).

Neutral Hydrogen (l=21 cm), radio map of the Milky Way. From Dickey and Lockman 1990.

From the IRAS (Infrared) satellite. Courtesy of Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, Caltech/JPL. IPAC is NASA's Infrared Astrophysics Data Center.

Near Infrared (few millionths of meter) view taken by the COBE satellite. Image is courtesy E. L. Wright (UCLA), The COBE Project, DIRBE, NASA.

Visible light view of the Milky Way. Image from Lund Observatory, Sweden.

X-ray image of the sky from the ROSAT satellite. Image courtesy the ROSAT Mission and the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik.

Gamma Ray view of the sky from the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.