A marvelous new interactive map of Milky Way lets you see a lot more detail in our galaxy while also shedding more light on dark matter and the origins of the Universe.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California said the image was produced by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft from 2009 to late 2013 as it orbited the Earth. Planck used its telescope to capture relic radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background or CMB, the thermal radiation left over from the "Big Bang" that occurred 13.8 billion years ago.

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Planck's mission was to look back in time to 370,000 years after the Big Bang.

JPL, which worked closely with ESA on the Planck mission, has just made public a captivating interactive map of the Milky Way using Planck's data. You can view it on the Planck website at http://planck.ipac.caltech.edu/wwt/.

The map consists of of several different views of the Milky Way: Dust Glow; Carbon Monoxide Gas and Magnetic Fields.

The image combines multiple views of the Milky Way, and shows dust, carbon monoxide gas, magnetic fields and a type of radiation known as "free-free." This kind of radiation occurs when isolated electrons and protons careen past one another in a series of near collisions, slowing down but continuing on their own way.

Analyzing data sent back by the Planck mission also discovered that the "Dark Ages" of our universe, or the time before stars formed, lasted for about 550 million years after the Big Bang instead of the 300 million to 400 million years as is the accepted theory.

The Planck data also supports the idea that the mysterious force known as dark energy is acting against gravity to push our universe apart at ever-increasing speeds, JPL said.