Researchers recently unveiled the largest and most detailed map of the gas clouds at the center of the Milky Way. Though the image will take years to analyze, it could reveal more about how the stars lived and died right after the Big Bang.

Largest-Ever Map of the Milky Way’s Center

Taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile, the new observations cover 650 light-years’ worth of structures surrounding the Milky Way’s central black hole. Also known as the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), this area is believed to mirror the conditions of the earliest galaxies in the universe.

The full image encompasses a portion of the sky as wide as three moons and includes supersonic gas, gargantuan clouds, stars, and “rare and enigmatic” structures. Scientists hope to better understand the conditions that led to the evolution of the Milky Way and infant universe by studying the velocity, movement, and chemical composition of the gas within this area.

“It’s a place of extremes, invisible to our eyes, but now revealed in extraordinary detail,” Ashley Barnes, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and a member of the team behind the new observations, said in a statement. And with even more powerful telescopes under construction in the region, “in many ways, this is just the beginning,” Barnes added.

According to the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the region contains approximately 80% of the dense gas in our galaxy. The flow of molecular gas leads to star formation in some areas while leaving other areas empty, and scientists hope to use the photo to understand why.

“By studying how stars are born in the CMZ, we can also gain a clearer picture of how galaxies grew and evolved,” ACES team leader Steven Longmore, a professor of astrophysics at Liverpool John Moores University, said in the statement. “We believe the region shares many features with galaxies in the early Universe, where stars were forming in chaotic, extreme environments.”