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| Orbiting round the centre of our Galaxy are found huge numbers of stars which are mostly faint, cool and often billions of years old. They are as ancient as the Galaxy itself. These stars are seen with the unaided eye as the hazy star clouds of the southern Milky Way, especially rich in Sagittarius. Our line of sight in this direction is strongly affected by dust, which reveals itself by both dimming the starlight passing through it and by selectively removing the blue light, changing the apparent colour to a deeper yellow. Though the colour change is only seen in photographs such as this, the dustiness of the Milky Way is obvious to the unaided eye. Near the centre of the picture is a region known as Baade's Window after the astronomer who selected this part of the Milky Way for special study. |