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The Center of the Galaxy

Posted by michael on from the hole-in-the-middle-of-it-all dept.

Dr. A. van Code writes: "NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured a stunning view of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, with hundreds of white dwarf stars, neutron stars and black holes bathed in an incandescent fog of 10-million-degree gas around a supermassive black hole. Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and co-workers took the 30 separate images covering a 400- by 900-light-year swath of the center of the galaxy, a region 26,000 light years away from Earth, using the orbiting X-ray satellite's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). His paper appears in the Jan. 10, 2002, issue of the journal Nature. There is also a Chandra page at Harvard, and an AP wire story."

8 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. A bit grainy by imrdkl · · Score: 3, Informative
    Downloading the medium image yields an approximate screen ratio:

    1 pixel = 1/2 light year

  2. Re:Where were they 3 months ago? by redcliffe · · Score: 3, Informative

    The problem is that there is a heck of a lot of dust, and stars in the way. You need to try and peer between the stars, and through the dust. Visible light just won't do it. Often they use infrared, radio or x-ray for this. This one is an X-ray image.

  3. Multicolored Stars by omarius · · Score: 2

    Why do the stars look like multicolored Christmas tree lights? Is that a function of different spectrum shifts of X-rays, or is it just for "fun?"

    -Omar

    1. Re:Multicolored Stars by anxious · · Score: 3, Informative

      Remember, this is an X-Ray image. The picture is a false color image that shows 3 different colors: blue for high energy, green for medium energy and red for low energy. I first saw this at the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

    2. Re:Multicolored Stars by esonik · · Score: 4, Informative
      from the chandra site:
      The supermassive black hole at the center of the Galaxy is located inside the bright white patch in the center of the image. The colors indicate X-ray energy bands - red (low), green (medium), and blue (high).


      Also very interesting is the part about chandra's hardware. It's not at all easy to make optics for x-rays.
  4. Daniel Wang's Research Group by Nissyen · · Score: 3, Informative

    For more information about the research that Daniel Wang and his group are doing at UMass amherst you can visit his website.

    --
    Idol Star Astronomer
  5. Looks EXACTLY like by Linux_ho · · Score: 2

    special effects from the original Stsr Trek. I used to think it was just because they didn't have a lot of money for effects. Now I suspect Gene Roddenberry was actually an extraterrestrial come to earth to help advance our civilization. And to make it with hot earth chicks, of course.

    --
    include $sig;
    1;
    1. Re:Looks EXACTLY like by Linux_ho · · Score: 2

      No accounting for the tastes of extraterrestrials.

      --
      include $sig;
      1;