Milky Way, all-sky Gaia image. Based on the measurements of the positions of nearly 1.7 billion stars, this map shows the total brightness and colour of stars observed by this European Space Agency satellite in each portion of the sky between July 2014 and May 2016. Brighter regions indicate denser concentrations of especially bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer bright stars are observed. The bright horizontal structure that dominates the image is the galactic plane. Darker regions correspond to foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust, where new generations of stars are being born. The two bright objects at lower right are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Image published in 2018.