THE GALACTIC CENTER

here are two views toward the center of our galaxy, the milky way. the first is an enormously zoomed-in image, a photomosaic taken from the ESO paranal observatory in chile, showing the intricate dust lanes, bright nebulae and star clusters scattered through the center's rich starfields. and the second is a zoomed-out view, an 800 million pixel photomosaic of images taken from exceptionally clear sites at the atacama desert in the southern hemisphere, and the canary islands in the northern hemisphere. click on each image to enlarge.