Around 2015, astronomers took on the painstaking task of stitching together Hubble Space Telescope images of this galaxy, but that effort had focused on the galaxy's northern half. Still, however, the resulting image showcased a sweeping view of 100 million stars packed into about 1.5 billion pixels.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have taken a detailed look at the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Sgr A*, finding it endlessly blowing bubbles.