The photo shows the plane of the Milky Way, which is often described as looking like two fried eggs back-to-back, with a flat disk in the middle.

MSN: New Milky Way photo captures 1 billion stars

The beetles performed best when confronted with a perfect starry sky projected on to the planetarium dome, but coped just as well when shown only the diffuse bar of light that is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.

BBC: Dung beetles guided by Milky Way

The VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey is an ESO public survey dedicated to scanning the southern plane and bulge of the Milky Way through five near-infrared filters.

ENGADGET: 9-gigapixel image of the Milky Way reminds us just how small we truly are