The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope has completed a new map named APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL) for Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers can observe well into cold, dense gas floating throughout our galaxy. The information from the Southern Hemisphere of the Galactic Plane, where a majority of the Milky Way's mass lies, was taken for map completion.

APEX is located at 5,100 meters above sea level on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile's Atacama region. The image also shows where stars form in the southern Milky Way. The map covers an area of sky 140 degrees long and 3 degrees wide. The map is also of better quality. This is a first image of its kind to have captured at the sub-millimeter wavelengths between infrared light and radio waves.

The map was completed on the basis of data collected between 2007 and 2010 and the information was combined with other data. The findings were published in the January 2016 journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“We can for the first time get a full census of the star-forming regions within our own galaxy. This allows us to find all such regions and to study their properties, such as the size of the gas clumps from which stars are formed”, said Carlos De Breuck, a scientist at European Southern Observatory.

The ATLASGAL images can be made available from the ESO archive. One can experience Milky Way through an interactive zoom-able 187 million pixel image courtesy of the European Southern Observatory. This map could tell about location, where next generation of high-mass stars and clusters form.