There is more to the Universe than human eyes can perceive and visible light is actually not so important in visualizing the intricate patterns of galaxies, interstellar dust and mysterious phenomena, such as black holes, pulsars and cosmic explosions.

AKARI is a joint Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) project with ESA and other international agencies, a high-capability infrared satellite that has just produced some astonishing views of the Universe, showing more that optical telescopes ever could.

Infrared radiation is a type of electromagnetic radiation longer than visible light, used in many industry areas as well as in astronomy, where telescopes equipped with infrared sensors can penetrate dusty regions of space, such as molecular clouds, can spot cooler objects in space and can see objects dating from the early days of the Universe.

Launched in February 2006, AKARI is performing a complex, multi-wavelength study of the sky in infrared light, aiming to help scientists understand cosmic phenomena like the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars and planetary systems.

The latest observations made by the satellite present images of the sky seen with unprecedented spatial resolution and wavelength coverage, with many regions that exhibit active star formation being clearly visible.

Some of these regions can easily be found in the constellation Cygnus, one of the brightest regions in the Milky Way, by using infrared imaging. One of these regions, located along the so-called 'Orion arm', one of the spiral arms of our Galaxy, contain numerous celestial objects at distances between 3,000 to 10,000 light-years, which can be seen projected on a small region.

The galactic plane is also visible, as well as another important star-forming region, the Horse-Head nebula, which looks like a dark cloud in visible light, but is extremely bright in the infrared. Many massive stars are thought to form at the head of Orion, producing consecutive supernova explosions that actively sweep out gas and dust in the region to form strange shell-like cosmic structures.

This satellite is sure to produce many other spectacular images of this type of regions of space, since star births are energetic processes, which heat up the dust and ionize the gas in their vicinity producing strong infrared radiation.