Photo Agency - Astronomy - Space - Nature
> Center of our galaxy
Center of our galaxy
author: ESO/APEX/2MASS/Novapix
reference: a-vlc11-00002
Image Size 300 DPI: 25 * 25 cm
This is a colour composite image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy, about 26 000 light years from Earth. Giant clouds of gas and dust are shown in blue, as detected by the LABOCA instrument on the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope at submillimetre wavelengths (870 micron). The image also contains near-infrared data from the 2MASS project at K-band (in red), H-band (in green), and J-band (in blue). The image shows a region approximately 100 light-years wide. Sagittarius A* is a compact object located at the centre of our own Milky Way Galaxy, at a distance of about 26 000 light-years from Earth. In recent years, observations of stars orbiting in its strong gravitational grip have convincingly proven that Sagittarius A* must be a supermassive black hole with a mass of about four million times that of the Sun.
Contact : Stéphane Aubin +33-(0)9-51-26-53-76
© Novapix - All rights reserved