Rosetta OSIRIS mosaic of the Galactic Bulge (flash)
The mosaic above was constructed from observations of a region of the Galactic Bulge, south of the Galactic Centre, taken with the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera on Rosetta. The observations were performed as part of the Rosetta Cruise Science programme "Observations of gravitational microlensing events with OSIRIS", see Kueppers et al 2007.
It covers a region of 16 × 2 degrees: Galactic longitude from -5 to 11 deg, Galactic latitude from -5 to -3 deg. This is a large part of the area routinely monitored by ground-based programmes for microlensing events.
The mosaic was constructed by combining images of 8 fields each of which was observed 7 times between 7 September and 4 October 2008. The exposure time (300 seconds) for each image was chosen to provide a good signal-to-noise ratio for the brighter microlensing events. As usual for such space-based imagery, some cosmic ray events are visible as streaks.
Credit: ESA ©2008 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Viewing the mosaic: To activate the flash file you need to click on the image. The mosaic will scan automatically across the viewing window. To change direction (left or right) move the mouse in the desired direction. To adjust the scanning rate move the mouse closer to the centre (to slow the scan) or further away (to increase the speed).
