The image shows the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, which is often described as looking like two fried eggs back-to-back, with a flat disc in the middle. Earth is close to the edge of this disc, and the image shows a cross-section through the disc as seen from Earth's perspective.
It combines data from the UKIDSS/GPS sky survey taken by the UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii with the VVV survey from the VISTA telescope in Chile.
Astronomers used infra-red radiation instead of visible light to enable them to see through much of the dust in the Milky Way and record details of the centre of the galaxy.