Baade's Window

Baade's Window is an area of the sky with relatively low amounts of interstellar dust along the line of sight from Earth.

This area is considered an observational "window" as the normally obscured Galactic Center of the Milky Way is visible in this direction.

[2][3] Walter Baade observed the stars in this area in the mid-1940s using the 100-inch (2.5 m) Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in California while searching for the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

[5] Baade's Window is frequently used to study distant central bulge stars in visible and near-visible wavelengths of light.

[7] OGLE and other observation programs have successfully detected extrasolar planets orbiting around central bulge stars in this area by the gravitational microlensing method.