English: The image of the central region of our own Milky Way Galaxy shows how areas which cannot be seen in visible light can show up very brightly in the infrared. The top row shows these regions in visible red light. At this wavelength we are seeing the light from billions of stars, particularly the largest, brightest ones. Note the dark bands where vast clouds of dust block our view of more distant objects.The middle row shows the same regions in the near-infrared (infrared wavelengths closest to visible light). The bottom row shows the same regions in the far-infrared. IPAC: The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) is NASA's multi-mission center of expertise for long-wavelength astrophysics.