Journey to the Centre of the Milky Way

ESO is pleased to present Journey to the Centre of the Milky Way, its first short fulldome planetarium mini-show produced in-house. The mini-show is available for previewing and as a series of fulldome frames for free download (lightly compressed jpegs, 98 GB).

The seven-minute mini-show in 4k resolution starts in the dry and empty Atacama Desert in Chile, home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Thanks to the extraordinary air conditions, in combination with the technological power of the VLT, we can take the beautiful images that make up this show, which leads us into the very centre of the Milky Way, where the view is mostly blocked by dust and gas.

By observing the heart of the galaxy over a period of twenty years the VLT and the Keck telescopes were able to observe the motion of more than 100 stars and identify the exact position of an otherwise invisible object: a supermassive black hole four million times the mass of the Sun.

Using VISTA, an infrared telescope also situated at the Paranal Observatory, ESO is able to look through the dust and dig even deeper into the mysteries of the Milky Way.

The new ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre will start construction in early 2015, and for this, ESO will produce more and longer planetarium shows. That material will also be made available for free use in other planetariums or downloaded for other purposes.

Courtesy of European Southern Observatory