A three-dimensional view of the Milky Way

In our Milky Way, there are about 200 billion suns as well as large quantities of gas, some of which serves as raw material for star births. The gas collects in compact lumps but also appears as extended molecular clouds. Astronomers have used the Apex sub-millimeter telescope in Chile to look deep into the galactic plane and measure the interstellar medium. They studied the distribution of the cold molecular gas in the inner region of the Milky Way with unprecedented accuracy. The researchers c...