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- Astronomers map the Milky Way in radio color
- Sharper, deeper, wider: what is actually new?
- Pulsars, hidden structures and 98,000 cosmic sources
- How this matters beyond professional astronomy
- Limitations, uncertainties and what comes next
- What makes this Milky Way radio image different from previous ones?
- Which telescopes and institutions created the radio color portrait?
- What do the radio colors in the image actually represent?
- Can this image tell astronomers how stars live and die?
- How will the SKA-Low telescope improve on this work?
What new secrets appear when the Milky Way is “repainted” in invisible colors? Astronomers have just mapped our Galaxy in low-frequency radio waves, revealing 98,000 cosmic sources and a hidden landscape of dead stars and stellar nurseries.
This new portrait does more than impress visually. It reshapes how Astronomy and Astrophysics can track the birth and death of stars, especially across the Southern sky where much of our Space neighborhood sits.
Astronomers map the Milky Way in radio color
A team at the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), based at Curtin University in Western Australia, has assembled the largest low-frequency radio color image of the Milky Way to date. According to reporting such as this detailed overview, this is currently the most expansive view of the Galaxy in this wavelength range.
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The map shows the Southern portion of the Galactic Plane, captured using multiple “colors” of Radio Astronomy light. Each frequency is rendered as a different visible color, turning normally invisible cosmic radio emission into a readable, data-rich image for researchers and the public alike.
How the radio color portrait was created
The image was produced by PhD researcher Silvia Mantovanini using data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a low-frequency radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia. She combined observations from two large surveys, GLEAM and its extended version GLEAM-X, observed across 28 nights in 2013–2014 and 113 nights between 2018 and 2020.
In one sentence, the method is straightforward: multiple years of low-frequency radio measurements were calibrated, aligned, and merged on supercomputers to form a coherent, color-coded map of the Galactic Plane. The execution, however, required around one million CPU hours at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre.
Sharper, deeper, wider: what is actually new?
Compared with an earlier GLEAM map published in 2019, the new image roughly doubles the resolution, increases sensitivity by about a factor of ten, and covers around twice the area of sky. According to summaries on platforms such as Phys.org and EarthSky, this combination of sharpness, depth and coverage has not been reached before at low frequencies.
This means astronomers can see much fainter structures and disentangle overlapping sources more clearly. Large radio loops, filaments, and diffuse clouds that were once blurred together now appear as distinct celestial components, giving a more accurate view of how gas, dust, and magnetic fields weave through the Galaxy.
Reading the radio colors: dead stars versus stellar nurseries
One of the most striking scientific gains involves supernova remnants, the expanding shells left when massive stars explode. Mantovanini’s work uses this image to distinguish between gas energized by dead stars and gas lit up by young, forming stars. In the map, large red bubbles often correspond to ancient stellar explosions, and compact blue patches highlight dense stellar nurseries.
This visual separation is not just aesthetic. It helps count how many stars have died in different regions of the Milky Way, and where new generations are forming. Reports such as this ScitechDaily analysis and Universe Magazine emphasize that many astronomers suspect thousands of supernova remnants remain undiscovered; this image offers a way to find them systematically.
Pulsars, hidden structures and 98,000 cosmic sources
Beyond supernova debris, the team catalogued around 98,000 radio sources in the Southern Galactic Plane. These include pulsars, planetary nebulae, compact HII regions, and distant background galaxies. A detailed breakdown appears in coverage like Space.com’s feature, which underlines how many of these sources were either newly detected or better characterized at these frequencies.
Pulsars — rapidly spinning neutron stars — are especially interesting. By measuring how their brightness changes across the GLEAM-X frequencies, researchers can test models of how these objects generate radio waves and refine distance estimates. This is correlation, not direct causation: the radio patterns do not “cause” specific pulsar properties, but they give clues that theories must match.
What the new map reveals about Galactic architecture
Associate Professor Natasha Hurley-Walker, the principal investigator of GLEAM-X at ICRAR, highlights that this low-frequency view brings out expansive celestial structures that higher-frequency telescopes miss or struggle to image. Giant arcs, loops and diffuse emission regions outline where energy from generations of stars has reshaped the interstellar medium.
According to reports such as Mirage News and Knowridge, no full low-frequency image of the entire Southern Galactic Plane had been released before this work. Hurley-Walker notes that only the upcoming SKA-Low telescope, part of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory, is expected to surpass this sensitivity and resolution once it is completed on the same Australian site.
How this matters beyond professional astronomy
For a science teacher, a student, or a non-specialist reader, why should this matter? First, this map makes an abstract concept — the dynamic life cycle of stars — visible in one coherent picture. It offers a concrete way to show that our Galaxy is not a static band of light but a dense, active ecosystem of formation and destruction.
Second, the project demonstrates how modern Radio Astronomy relies on advanced computing and long-term surveys, mirroring trends in climate modeling or medical imaging. The same kind of data processing pipelines used here are increasingly relevant across disciplines, from environmental monitoring to telecommunications.
- Education: Teachers can use the color-coded image to explain different wavelengths and why multi-frequency observations matter for understanding Space.
- Technology: The supercomputing workflows tested on GLEAM-X support future projects like the SKA, which will handle even larger cosmic datasets.
- Policy and funding: Long-duration surveys, spanning years and hundreds of observing hours, show why steady investment in research infrastructure is needed.
Limitations, uncertainties and what comes next
The image focuses on the Southern Galactic Plane, so it does not represent the entire Milky Way. The work is also limited to a specific low-frequency band, which is highly sensitive to extended structures but less suited to some compact, high-energy phenomena. Interpretations must therefore be combined with X‑ray, optical and higher-frequency radio data from other instruments.
Identifying supernova remnants and pulsars still involves probabilities and selection effects. Brighter objects are easier to detect, and some may be hidden behind dense gas or confused with nearby sources. Analyses presented in outlets like Live Science and ScienceDaily stress that these catalogues are incomplete snapshots, not exhaustive censuses.
Even with these caveats, the new radio color portrait stands as a bridge between current instruments and the upcoming SKA era. It shows what becomes possible when long surveys, careful calibration and large-scale computing are aligned behind a single question: how does our Galaxy really look once all the invisible radiation is brought into view?
What makes this Milky Way radio image different from previous ones?
The new map uses low-frequency radio data from the GLEAM and GLEAM-X surveys, processed with about one million CPU hours, to deliver roughly twice the resolution, ten times the sensitivity, and twice the sky coverage of the 2019 GLEAM image. It reveals 98,000 radio sources and large-scale Galactic structures that were previously blurred or invisible.
Which telescopes and institutions created the radio color portrait?
Astronomers from the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at Curtin University produced the image using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia. Data processing ran on supercomputers at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, combining several years of observations of the Southern Galactic Plane.
What do the radio colors in the image actually represent?
Each color corresponds to a different range of radio frequencies. By assigning visible colors to these frequencies, researchers can separate distinct physical processes: large red shells often trace supernova remnants, while compact blue patches highlight dense regions where new stars are forming. The colors are therefore informative encodings, not how the Galaxy would appear to human eyes.
Can this image tell astronomers how stars live and die?
The image does not directly show stellar lifetimes, but it reveals the signatures of those stages. Supernova remnants mark where massive stars have exploded, and HII regions trace gas ionized by young stars. By counting and characterizing these radio features across the Milky Way, researchers can test models of stellar birth and death, though they still rely on statistical interpretation rather than direct causal tracking.
How will the SKA-Low telescope improve on this work?
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The SKA-Low component of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory, now under construction in Western Australia, is designed to be far more sensitive and higher resolution than the MWA. Once operational, it should detect fainter and more distant radio sources, map the Galactic Plane with finer detail, and expand these low-frequency studies to the full sky, building on the methods demonstrated by the current GLEAM-X image.
