NASA has released a 360-degree view of the Milky Way Galaxy. With the help of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists used over two million infrared pictures of the galaxy to compose the image. The pictures were taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope over a period of 10 years.

In order to print this out, scientists might have required a display as big as a football field. To avoid that need, scientists created a digital viewer that can be used by anyone, even astronomers. Still, 3% of the night sky is made by these images, but 'stellar pancake' shape of the Milky Way helped to show over half of the stars in the Milky Way's disc, said Robert Hurt, an imaging specialist at NASA's Spitzer Space Center.

It was hard work of Edward Churchwell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of astronomy and a group of researchers that finally led to assemblage of the image.

Churchwell said measurement of the large-scale structure of the galaxy using stars rather than gas is something they have been able to do for the first time.

"We've established beyond the shadow of a doubt that our galaxy has a large bar structure that extends halfway out to the Sun's orbit. We know more about where the Milky Way's spiral arms are", Churchwell added.

Since its launch in 2003, Spitzer has been studying asteroids in solar system as well as remote galaxies at the end of the universe. Spitzer has already helped scientists figure out that the size of the galaxy is larger than what was previously thought.

The image of galaxy provides new details about the stricture of the galaxy in addition to more than 200 million objects being discovered by scientists in the galaxy, reported Nature World News. Scientists have some idea now how stars in our galaxy are distributed generally.