8 Optical

図 9: Optical

Intensity of visible (0.4 - 0.6 micron) light from a photographic survey. Due to the strong obscuring effect of interstellar dust,the light is primarily from stars within a few thousand light-years of the Sun, nearby on the scale of the Milky Way. The widespread bright red regions are produced by glowing, low-density gas. Dark patches are due to absorbing clouds of gas and dust, which are evident in the Molecular hydrogen and Infrared maps as emission regions. Stars differ from one another in color, as well as mass, size and luminosity. Interstellar dust scatters blue light preferentially, reddening the starlight somewhat relative to its true color and producing a diffuse bluish glow. This scattering, as well as absorption of some of the light by dust, also leaves the light diminished in brightness. The panorama was assembled from sixteen wide-angle photographs taken by Dr. Axel Mellinger using a standard 35-mm camera and color negative film. The exposures were made between July 1997 and January 1999 at sites in the United States, South Africa, and Germany. The image processing and mosaicing procedures are described in the document cited below. Image courtesy of A. Mellinger.

$$460 \times 10^3 {\rm GHz} = 6.517227\times 10^{-7} {\rm m} = 6517 {\rm\AA}$$