When you’re drawing bubbles, star clusters and everything else all over the Milky Way, you have the option to click a little ‘star’ button to mark an image as a favourite. These are then visible in the ‘My Galaxy’ portion of the site. Primarily this is done to let you keep hold of the images that you like the most. A side effect though is that we can see which images are collectively seen as the best by the Milky Way Project community.
Below you can see the 10 most-favourited images from the Milky Way Project. I’ll let the images speak for themselves. You can click on any of them to jump into Milky Way Talk where you can learn more about them or make a comment. These images also exists as a collection in Talk, where you can also comment and discuss them as a group.
The Milky Way Project Blog 
Just love how colourful they are!
Incredible, amazing, awesome.
These images of the universe wrinkle my brain. The irony is that reality is way cooler than Science Fiction.
Don’t they make you feel infinitesimal?
One Big Galaxy in our Solar System with Different Parts label.
These wonderful space creation is unfortunately in false colour, but it remain and show the beauty of the extraordinary complexed of the condensed matter in our Universe.
Hi !
is that possible has someones to translate the tutorial (subtiltle for example) in french …
Best Regards Sylvain
These images are not “true color”, they are taken with an infrared sensor. The colors are arbitrary.
so much to learn so little time
inspiring views of our universe
Wow. Are those natural or false color?
This is the best abstract art that is out there no doubt. I would love to hang one of these pictures up on my wall just to make me feel small every day.
What a melting pot!
What beauty and complexity from ‘just’ simple gaseous elements floating about and being conducted to gravity’s tune.
Shame we can’t all be around to appreciate the emergent behavior on a longer time frame; where the ‘dance’ really gets going – ah, well, at least our computer simulations are starting to show us some of the fancy ‘footwork’ going on!
Now this really makes you dream…
the only thing cooler would be flying by in a spaceship and see this live. !!!
the third looks like roses nice
Excellent,its just amazing.
Amazing to the human mind and experience.
And all tis just happened to come into existence?
Is space being created to accommodate the expanding universe?
Don’t forget that you can download huge mosaics of this entire survey, including your favorite regions, at the Spitzer website! Just search for the term GLIMPSE and you’ll find the segments.
Seems that http://talk.milkywayproject.org/objects/AMW433ed0f has been cut from http://talk.milkywayproject.org/objects/AMW233e158
Van Gogh
If only everyone could understand the beauty of the universe what a better world we would live in!
…and me just sitting on earth eating orange…
it’s something that puzzle’s me: i assume that all the images are black and white, right? how come we end up looking at color images? why is not a blue knot rather than green…thank you
Simply beautiful.
Should be much bigger.
just beautiful
wow,what a colorful images…
But all pictures are very horrible ……
One day we will call this HOME.
Absolutely amazingly wonderful!
See more, it mystifies more. Learn more, know less!!!
I know these are false colors. But, I wonder what the difference is between the red and green gas clouds; what are they made up of?
Amazing and breathtaking.
So much secrets, anwsers and questions!
To boldly search, what no generation have searchd before.
For all those asking about what the colours mean – here is the answer. These are images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, which sees in the infrared. I’ll use the term µm in the following descriptions to talk about the wavelength of the light. 1 µm is 0.001 mm. You can read more about Spitzer here: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/
BLUE: Spitzer/IRAC 4.5 µm emission. Primarily stars, but also sometimes shows up in shocked or ionized gas.
GREEN: Spitzer/IRAC 8.0 µm emission. Primarily emission from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), complex organic molecules (actually an ingredient in Earthly smog!) that fluoresce strongly when exposed to ultraviolet radation. Also some bright stars and young stellar objects show up here, and in the more energetic bubbles we get 8 µm emission from heated, small dust grains trapped in the ionization regions.
RED: Spitzer/MIPS 24 µm emission. Primarily warm dust, either inside ionization regions (the bubbles) or in discs/envelopes surrounding young stellar objects. Stars inside dark nebulae that appear red are very likely protostars or similar young stellar objects. Also some supernova remnants and planetary nebulae will show up in red, but these probably won’t have the surrounding shell of green emission so they look a bit different from the bubbles.
wonderful and excellent
Im 46 years old, I remember as a kid staring into the night sky and feeling a connection like I belonged out there somewhere. Looking at these images brings those childhood feelings back and in a way places life in perspective. Thanks.
WOW!
Can anyone doubt the grace of the source, that creates all this?
And we are ONE of the lucky ONES, who are allowed to explore those wunderful beeings. Touches me deeply in my heart. So many miracles! Greez to all ONES aut there.
What a thrill, to fly through clouds like these, in a Einstein ship. To measure the clouds with practically rigid bodies, and drop stones from the window!
Is it possible to have these incredible photo’s done in a form of 3d?
One could get lost in time, space and research for a long time, if 3d were possible.
avw
Of the ten most favored the third one I like most. Oh, for mind blowing images, do a web search on nebula guys. Heh, I’ve got about 100 images of various nebulae, galaxy and such as a screen saver. I love when the saver kicks in and I’ve come back to the pc. I just sit back and gaze at the images for a bit of peace among the stars.
~Bright Blessings
Tina
would be nice to know what wavelengths are represented by the various colors.