The brightest regions are depicted in yellow, while the faintest emissions are blue or black. Small yellow dots are stars, while the larger yellow regions are dense and dusty infrared-emitting clouds where star formation is in progress. IRAS scanned the whole sky at four infrared wavelengths. Here IRAS depicts the clouds of the Milky Way with broad brush-strokes, at 12 microns wavelength. ISO reveals much more detail in its closer examination of the selected strip, at 15 microns.
Astronomers judge it to be a moderately active star-forming region.
Other dense patches occur on either side of a smaller bright blob to the right of the main one. They spread for a third of the way around the sky, on either side of the centre of the Galaxy, which lies in the constellation Sagittarius.