Spitzer Captures Our Galaxy's Bustling Center
This infrared mosaic offers a stunning view of the Milky Way galaxy's busy center. The pictured region, located in the Sagittarius constellation, is 900 light-years agross and shows hundreds of thousands of mostly old stars amid clouds of glowing dust lit up by younger, more massive stars. Our Sun is located 26,000 light-years away in a more peaceful, spacious neighborhood, out in the galactic suburbs. The bright core in the middle of the image is a dense cluster of stars at the center of the Milky Way, within which lurks a black hole about 4 million times more massive than our Sun.
Viewing the center of the Milky Way from Earth can be difficult because the plane of the galaxy's spiral disk is filled with cold dust. Visible light coming from the galaxy's center is virtually impossible to observe because dust dims it by a factor of 1 trillion. But infrared light can shine through this dust.
Read more about this image here:
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario