Visible All-Sky Survey
Visible All-Sky Survey
| Group Name | mwVis |
| Reference | Axel Mellinger (Universitaet Potsdam) |
| Prepared by | Ryan Wyatt (AMNH/Hayden) |
| Labels | No |
| Files | mw-visible.speck |
| Dependencies | mellinger-optmw.sgi |
| Wavelength | 400-700 nm |
| Frequency | 750,000-430,000 GHz |
The visible Milky Way shows the Milky Way Galaxy from Earth's perspective, our night-sky view. This all-sky image shows the gas and dust visible to us from our own Galaxy.
Because we cover this image in greater detail in the Milky Way Atlas, we will forgo discussing it here. Instead, we will refer you to “Visible All-Sky Survey” for a thorough description of the image.
Like the objects in the Milky Way Atlas, the all-sky images in the Extragalactic Atlas are placed at a fixed distance. Of course, the Extragalactic Atlas scale (megaparsecs) is much larger than that of the Milky Way Atlas (parsecs). You may recall in the Milky Way Atlas that the visible all-sky image is placed at an arbitrary distance of 1,000 parsecs (or 3,260 light-years). In the Extragalactic Atlas, we place the all-sky image on a sphere with a radius of 1 Mpc, or 3.26 million light-years. This distance corresponds with that of the stars, constellations, and the coordinate spheres.
© 2002-2005 American Museum of Natural History
Last Modified: 2007-12-19 by Brian Abbott