Principal Research Scientist Johannes Staguhn is the lead author on a paper recently published in The Astrophysical Journal that describes a new image from Milky Way galaxy’s center of a cosmic “candy cane.” The image—captured by a NASA-designed and built instrument called the Goddard-IRAM Superconducting 2-Millimeter Observer, or GISMO—shows the inner part of our galaxy, which hosts the largest, densest collection of giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way. These vast, cool clouds contain enough dense gas and dust to form tens of millions of stars like the Sun. The view spans a part of the sky about 1.5 degrees across, equivalent to roughly three times the apparent size of the Moon.