Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2015 January 18
The Galactic Core in Infrared
Credit: Hubble: NASA, ESA, & D. Q. Wang (U. Mass, Amherst); Spitzer: NASA, JPL, & S. Stolovy (SSC/Caltech)
Explanation: 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.
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (
MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell (
UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman
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