skip to main |
skip to sidebar
heythereuniverse:
The Galactic Core in Infrared | APOD
What’s happening at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy? To help find out, the orbiting Hubble and Spitzer space
telescopes have combined their efforts to survey the region in
unprecedented detail in infrared light. Infrared light is particularly
useful for probing the Milky Way’s center because visible light is more greatly obscured by dust. The above image encompasses more than 2,000 images from the Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS taken in 2008. The image spans 300 by 115 light years with such high resolution that structures only 20 times the size of our own Solar System are discernable. Clouds of glowing gas and dark dust as well as three large star clusters are visible. Magnetic fields may be channeling plasma along the upper left near the Arches Cluster, while energetic stellar winds are carving pillars near the Quintuplet Cluster on the lower left. The massive Central Cluster of stars surrounding Sagittarius A* is
visible on the lower right. Why several central, bright, massive stars
appear to be unassociated with these star clusters is not yet
understood.
No comments:
Post a Comment