The Milky Way bridges from here to eternity

The European Southern Observatory’s monster 8-meter Very Large Telescope observatory is silhouetted against the galaxy itself — and beyond — in this stunning vista of the high Atacama desert of Chile:

[Click to southernhemispherenate.]

What a breathtaking panorama! It’s dominated by the Milky Way Galaxy, hanging low near the horizon. We live inside the disk of our galaxy, so we see it from the inside out. It makes a thick line across the sky, the central hub bulging out in the middle. Dust chokes the interstellar view, creating dark lanes that block the light from stars behind them.

On the left you can see the two companion dwarf galaxies to our own: the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. They apparently hang side-by-side in the sky, but are separated by over 40,000 light years… and are removed from us by distances of 160,000 and 200,000 light years, respectively.

And on the right is our eye on the sky, Unit Telescope 1 of the VLT — and that’s only one of four of the giant 8 meter telescopes in operation. I like the imagery here: the telescope at one end, distant galaxies ...

Full story at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/04/06/the-milky-way-bridges-from-here-to-eternity/