New Inhabitants of Enormous Stars
This merged color infrared picture of the center of our Milky Way galaxy reveals new inhabitants of enormous stars and new details in compound structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This extensive view is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core. It offers a nearby laboratory for how massive stars form and persuade their environment in the often violent nuclear regions of other galaxies. This view combines the sharp imaging of the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with color imagery from a previous Spitzer Space Telescope examination done with its Infrared Astronomy Camera (IRAC). The Galactic core is covered in visible light by intervening dust clouds, but infrared light penetrates the dust. The spatial resolution of NICMOS corresponds to 0.025 light-years at the distance of the galactic core of 26,000 light-years. Hubble reveals details in objects as small as 20 times the size of our own solar system. The NICMOS images were taken between February 22 and June 5, 2008.
Source : NASA
This merged color infrared picture of the center of our Milky Way galaxy reveals new inhabitants of enormous stars and new details in compound structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This extensive view is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core. It offers a nearby laboratory for how massive stars form and persuade their environment in the often violent nuclear regions of other galaxies. This view combines the sharp imaging of the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with color imagery from a previous Spitzer Space Telescope examination done with its Infrared Astronomy Camera (IRAC). The Galactic core is covered in visible light by intervening dust clouds, but infrared light penetrates the dust. The spatial resolution of NICMOS corresponds to 0.025 light-years at the distance of the galactic core of 26,000 light-years. Hubble reveals details in objects as small as 20 times the size of our own solar system. The NICMOS images were taken between February 22 and June 5, 2008.
Source : NASA
