Iridescent red and blue ribbons of light arching over the Australian outback are helping scientists understand how the Milky Way galaxy came to be.
Using an advanced radio telescope in remote Western Australia, more than 700km north of Perth, astronomers have been able to visualise the galaxy's magnetic fields.
It is the most detailed map of the fields yet, providing more clues about the invisible forces that influence the formation of galaxies.
Astronomers from the CSIRO and SKA Observatory in the Murchison region looked for the way bright radio waves from distant galaxies changed as they came through the Milky Way's magnetic fields.
The changes are telltale signs of the magnetic fields' strength and direction.
"What we're doing here is looking for those compact, distant, far away galaxies and building up an atlas of those telltale signs," CSIRO research scientist Tim Galvin told AAP.
