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A new view of the Milky Way has been revealed by capturing different radio frequencies, showing where stars are born and where they are dying — details not normally visible to the naked eye or through astrophotography. The GLEAM survey, short for Galactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA, is a radio astronomy project that mapped the entire sky visible from Western Australia using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope. The survey looked at radio waves from space to study galaxies, stars, supernova remnants, and other cosmic objects that cannot be seen with regular telescopes. Silvia Mantovanini is a PhD student at Curtin University's International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. She spent 18 months and more than 40,000 hours using supercomputers at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre to process data from the GLEAM survey and create the image. "It's 20 mosaics, with slightly different frequencies overlaid one on top of the other," Ms Mantovanini said. "It's a different way of looking at the Milky Way compared to what we see by eye." Dying stars The orange and red areas show dying stars that have exploded, known as supernova remnants. Ms Mantovanini said they gave off special radio signals made by charged particles moving around magnetic fields. "The blue areas show places where new stars are being born," she said. The image is made by combining 20 different images taken at slightly different frequencies, revealing the final moments of old stars and the birth of new ones. Ms Mantovanini said stars were dying and being born all the time. "We always have new stars that are merging with others or interacting with other objects in the sky, and then slowly they go to die," she said. A reflection of the past Ms Mantovanini said the image was a reflection of the past from a long time ago. "Because light takes time to travel through space, everything we see in the sky shows us the past," she said. "So when we look at stars or galaxies, we're actually looking back in time, seeing how things once were, not how they are today. "Even when you look up from your own backyard, you're seeing into the past." Ms Mantovanini hopes people will find the data useful for prompting new discoveries and to help better understand what is happening within our galaxy.
