Swirling beauty of Milky Way’s heart captured in new telescope picture

The Central Molecular Zone of the Milky Way (Alma/S Longmore via AP)

A telescope in Chile has revealed in unprecedented detail the swirling splendour of star-forming gases at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.

The picture released on Wednesday by the European Southern Observatory zeros in on a region of cold cosmic gases more than 650 light-years across.