By Amit Malewar Published: October 29, 2025
Collected at: https://www.techexplorist.com/new-radio-map-paints-milky-way-dazzling-unseen-colors/101349/
In a dazzling leap for cosmic cartography, astronomers from the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have unveiled the most detailed low-frequency radio color image of the Milky Way ever created. This isn’t your typical starry snapshot; it’s a radiant tapestry woven from the invisible “colors” of radio light, revealing the Southern Hemisphere’s view of our galaxy in unprecedented detail.
Silvia Mantovanini, a PhD student at Curtin University’s ICRAR node, spent 18 months and a staggering one million CPU hours sculpting this image using supercomputers at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Center. Her digital brushstrokes were drawn from two massive sky surveys, GLEAM and GLEAM-X, conducted using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia.
“This vibrant image delivers an unparalleled perspective of our Galaxy at low radio frequencies,” said Ms Mantovanini. “It provides valuable insights into the evolution of stars, including their formation in various regions of the Galaxy, how they interact with other celestial objects, and ultimately their demise.”
The image offers twice the resolution, ten times the sensitivity, and double the sky coverage compared to its 2019 predecessor. That means astronomers can now peer deeper into the Milky Way’s hidden layers, distinguishing newborn stars from the ghostly remains of exploded ones.
“You can clearly identify remnants of exploded stars, represented by large red circles. The smaller blue regions indicate stellar nurseries where new stars are actively forming,” Ms Mantovanini explained.
Her research zeroes in on supernova remnants, the glowing clouds left behind when stars die spectacularly. While hundreds have been found, thousands more may be lurking in the galactic shadows, waiting to be discovered.
The image also holds promise for decoding the mysteries of pulsars, spinning stellar corpses that beam radio waves like cosmic lighthouses. By tracking their brightness across GLEAM-X frequencies, scientists hope to understand better how these enigmatic objects work and where they reside.
Associate Professor Natasha Hurley-Walker, principal investigator of the GLEAM-X survey, called the image a major milestone: “This low-frequency image allows us to unveil large astrophysical structures in our Galaxy that are difficult to image at higher frequencies.”
“No low-frequency radio image of the entire Southern Galactic Plane has been published before, making this an exciting milestone in astronomy,” she added.
The surveys cataloged 98,000 radio sources across the southern Galactic Plane, from pulsars and planetary nebulae to compact HII regions, dense clouds of ionized gas, and distant galaxies beyond the Milky Way’s borders.
And while this image sets a new benchmark, it’s only a prelude. “Only the world’s largest radio telescope, the SKA Observatory’s SKA-Low telescope, set to be completed in the next decade on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia, will have the capacity to surpass this image in terms of sensitivity and resolution,” concluded Associate Professor Hurley-Walker.
Journal Reference:
- GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array survey eXtended (GLEAM-X) III: Galactic Plane, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (2025). DOI: 10.1017/pasa.2025.10094
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