annotated images.
image 1: milky way core
Some objects of interest.
Snake Nebula: A dark river of gas and dust sitting around 650 light years away.
Baade's Window: A small window in the interstellar dust of the great rift, allowing us to view the center of the milky way galaxy.
SWEEPS: (Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search) - another small window into the core of our galaxy, used for detecting the transits of large Jupiter like planets orbiting near to their host star.
Small Sagittarius Star Cloud: A huge cluster of >10,000 stars approximately 600 light years across, and around 10,000 light years away.
Eagle Nebula: A star forming region about 7000 light years away, containing the famous pillars of creation.
Galactic Center: The location of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* in the very center of our galaxy.
image 2: southern milky way
Some objects of interest.
Southern Cross: Famous asterism in the constellation Crux, located at the southern most part of the milky way
Carina Nebula: Brightest star forming region in the night sky, stretching around 500 light years across and located around 7,500 light years away.
Magellanic Clouds: Nearby small galaxies (covered in section 5.0 here).
Omega Centauri: The milky way's largest globular cluster, containing around 10 million stars.
image 3: milky way panorama
image 4: summer milky way panorama