You’ve never seen the Milky Way like this.

The APEX telescope in Chile mapped the Milky Way galaxy in a more detailed manner than ever before as part of the Apex Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy. The area mapped was four times larger than in previous surveys and the images were of much higher quality.

The stunning images were released by the European Southern Observatory to celebrate the completion of the survey.

According to CNN, the mapping was conducted between July 2007 and November 2010, with the findings published in the journal, "Astronomy & Astrophysics" in January.

For those who want to see more images, the ESO has archived all of the data on its website.

The ESO has also posted a video on YouTube capturing highlights from the survey.

http://youtu.be/Ip3YHk0gu0I

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