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Our galaxy is teeming with hundreds of billions of stars, dark plumes of dust and gas, and glittering stellar nurseries where stars are born. Now, astronomers have documented those wonders in unprecedented detail during the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey, which captured 21,400 individual exposures over two years.

Our galaxy is teeming with hundreds of billions of stars, dark plumes of dust and gas, and glittering stellar nurseries where stars are born. Now, astronomers have documented those wonders in unprecedented detail during the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey, which captured 21,400 individual exposures over two years.

The survey, which marks the program’s second data release since 2017, is the largest catalog of Milky Way objects to date. The Dark Energy Camera, located on the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the National Science Foundation’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, captured the data for the survey.

The telescopes there are at an altitude of about 7,200 feet (2,200 meters) and you can observe the southern sky in great detail through visible and near-infrared wavelengths of light. The two data releases from the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey cover 6.5% of the night sky. Astronomers will be able to use the data release to better map the 3D structure of dust and stars in the galaxy.

“This is quite a technical feat. Imagine a group photo of more than three billion people and each individual is recognizable,” Debra Fischer, director of the National Science Foundation’s division of astronomical sciences, said in a statement. “Astronomers will carefully study this detailed portrait of more than three billion stars in the Milky Way for decades to come. This is a fantastic example of what partnerships between federal agencies can accomplish.”