A giant composite image of the Milky Way's center has been
taken by NASA's three Great Observatories — the Hubble and Spitzer Space
Telescopes and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
The image, unveiled by NASA today, was made to celebrate the
International
Year of Astronomy, 400 years after Galileo first turned his telescope to
the heavens.
The pictures of our galaxy's hub combines a near-infrared
view from the Hubble
Space Telescope, an infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and an
X-ray view from the Chandra X-ray Observatory into one multiwavelength picture.
Experts from all three observatories carefully assembled the
final image from large mosaic photo surveys taken by each telescope. This
composite image provides one of the most detailed views ever of our galaxy's mysterious
core.
More than 150 planetariums, museums, nature centers,
libraries, and schools across the country have received a giant 6-foot-by-3-foot
print of the stunning image.
Participating institutions also will display a matched trio
of Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra images of the Milky Way's center on a second
large panel measuring 3 feet by 4 feet.
The composite image features the spectacle of stellar
evolution: from vibrant regions
of star birth, to young hot stars, to old cool stars, to seething remnants
of stellar death called black holes. This activity occurs against a fiery
backdrop in the crowded, hostile environment of the galaxy's core, the center
of which is dominated by a supermassive black hole nearly four million times
more massive than our Sun.
Permeating the region is a diffuse blue haze of X-ray light
from gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by outflows from the
supermassive black hole as well as by winds from massive stars and by stellar
explosions.
Infrared light reveals more than a hundred thousand stars
along with glowing dust clouds that create complex structures including compact
globules, long filaments, and finger-like "pillars of creation,"
where newborn stars are just beginning to break out of their dark, dusty
cocoons.
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