Picture of the Day: An 'Enormous' Slice of the Milky Way

This new image covers an "enormous section" of our own Milky Way galaxy, a 1,000-square degree region containing the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus, though neither stands out among this swirling backdrop. In many of the dense clouds, called nebulae, new stars are born. Some of those spots alone are hundreds of light years across. This image is a mosaic comprised thousands of frames -- nearly 30 billion pixels in total -- from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

Below, recent Pictures of the Day:

Image: Library of Congress.