The first comprehensive Atlas of the Milky Way

The Milky Way is the cosmic environment in which the solar system, the Earth, and life as we know it came into being. It is also the veil through which we peer into the extra-galactic universe. Its dust obscures our view of the formation of the cosmos. Its magnetic fields distort the observations of nature's most powerful particle accelerators.

Its structure and metabolism determine the great diversity of observed star and planetary systems, including our own.

Due to a lack of distance information, currently most information about the structure of the Milky Way is two-dimensional, while three-dimensional information is needed.

For a breakthrough in Galactic cartography and the science it enables, we will create the first comprehensive three-dimensional atlas of all the physical components of the Milky Way.

Our atlas will be self-consistent between component maps, quantify their remaining uncertainties, and be the most detailed to date.

Thanks to the dramatic progress in observations at all wavelengths and in algorithmic methods based on information field theory in recent years, now is the right time to do this.

Our team's combined expertise in galactic astrophysics, algorithms, observations, Milky Way surveys, and information field theory with its application to galactic tomography puts us in a unique position to generate the first comprehensive Milky Way Atlas.

We will apply this atlas to a number of pressing questions in cosmology, cosmic ray, and interstellar medium research and transfer the used tomography technologies into other areas, like medical imaging, Earth monitoring, and industrial data analysis.