An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” presents maps and a catalog of compact sources obtained thanks to a project called Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey (Hi-GAL). The observations made during the ESA Herschel Space Telescope’s mission were used to create maps of the complete Plan Galactic in the far infrared with a level of completeness never seen before.
The Herschel Space Telescope was launched in 2009 and ended its mission in 2013 performing during those four years scans of the sky at the far-infrared and sub-millimeter frequencies. The reason for observations at those frequencies is that they’re sensitive to some of the coldest objects in the universe such as the cosmic dust. It may seem a low-interest research but dust is a critical component for the formation of new stars.
The Hi-GAL project, developed by an international team led by Sergio Molinari from IAPS-INAF in Rome, Italy, made it possible to achieve results that will be useful for the whole astronomical community. The researchers created maps that will help better understand the mechanisms of star formation, a gigantic work because it required the combination of data from several small areas of the sky.
The results are not only breathtaking but provide a wealth of scientifically useful information. The colors contain detailed information about the different regions and there are all the morphological information such as the filamentary structure of the diffuse component of the clouds. Stars are formed mainly on the densest material structures so all the information are useful to understand where and how those processes are happening.
The 70 maps obtained so far, based on a total of 900 hours of observations of the Herschel Space Telescope, are only the first group released and cover the inner region of the Milky Way, around its center. The rest of the galaxy will be covered by other maps whose release is scheduled by the end of 2016.
As usually happens, the data collected by an astronomical instrument keep on being used for new research even years after the end of its mission. In this case, INAF (National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome, Italy) and ASI (Italian Space Agency) supported the Hi-GAL project, the greatest among those that used the observations from the Herschel Space Telescope. It’s a perfect combination of an instrument that offered great performances and an extraordinary processing work on the data it collected.
