DECam image of the bulge of the Milky Way from NOIRLab

NOIRLab just released (https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2027a/) an incredibly high res view of the Milky Way’s galactic bulge. This color-composite shows a main part of the new Blanco DECam Bulge Survey of 250 million stars in our galaxy’s bulge compared against the Digitized Sky Survey. The 4 x 2 degrees excerpt can be explored in all its whopping 50,000 x 25,000 pixels.

Zoom in and explore interactively!

Compare/crossfade with the higher fidelity astrometry of the PanSTARRS 3Pi (which will require some substantial zooming). Ignore the color distortion at the bottom of the PanSTARRS 3Pi survey where the data ends. I am quite pleased with the alignment (compared to the more accurate PanSTARRS) after spending more time than I’d like to admit manually tweaking it.

Hint - use the fullscreen mode for easier viewing :slight_smile:

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