Credit: B. Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF from data provided by N.E. Kassim, Naval Research Laboratory

The Very Large Array (VLA) was used to make the largest and most sensitive radio image of the Milky Way Galaxy\'s center. The bright diagonal features trace our Galaxys disk-like shape viewed edge-on. The brightest source is called Sagittarius A. (The Galaxy\'s center lies toward the constellation Sagittarius, or Sgr.) Deep within Sgr A is Sgr A*, a black hole with a mass millions of times that of the Sun. Hot young stars heat the gas around them in bright, round blobs. Massive supernovae explosions leave bubble-shaped remnants. Spiraling or synchrotron radiation seems makes a collection of strange, thread-like structures. Their emission, orientation, and structure provide important clues about the energetics and large-scale magnetic field structure here.

Provider: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Image Source: https://public.nrao.edu/gallery/the-center-of-our-galaxy-2/

Curator: NRAO/AUI/NSF, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)