Image Credit

Color composite of large scale mosaics of the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) J, H, and K image data at full resolution (1 arcsecond/pixel). The entire image covers 44×8 degrees of the Galactic plane, centered on the Galactic center (158,400 x 28,800 pixels; 109.5 GBytes). If printed out, it would be eight feet high.  The image was computed with the Montage image mosaic engine (http://montage.ipac.caltech.edu).  Courtesy Dr. John Good (Caltech)