A Milky Way Band

Most bright stars in our Milky Way Galaxy reside in a disk. Since our Sun also resides in this disk, these stars appear to us as a diffuse band that circles the sky. The above panorama of a southern band of the Milky Way's disk was taken from Australia . A 40-minute exposure was used, and the colors were digitally enhanced. Visible are many bright stars , dark dust lanes , red emission nebulae , blue reflection nebulae , and clusters of stars . In addition to all this matter that we can see, astronomers suspect there exists even more dark matter that we cannot see.