The Galactic Centre and Sagittarius B2

Colour-composite image of the Galactic Centre and Sagittarius B2 as seen by the ATLASGAL survey. The centre of the Milky Way is home to a supermassive black hole more than four million times the mass of our Sun. It is about 25 000 light years from Earth. Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2) is one of the largest clouds of molecular gas in the Milky Way. This dense region lies close to the Galactic Centre and is rich in many different interstellar molecules.

In this image, the ATLASGAL submillimetre-wavelength data are shown in red, overlaid on a view of the region in infrared light, from the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) in green and blue. Sagittarius B2 is the bright orange-red region to the middle left of the image, which is centred on the Galactic Centre.

Crédit:

ESO/APEX & MSX/IPAC/NASA

À propos de l'image

Identification:eso0924e
Type:Observation
Date de publication:1 juillet 2009
Communiqués de presse en rapport:eso0924
Taille:2113 x 1074 px

À propos de l'objet

Nom:Milky Way Galactic Centre, Sagittarius B2
Type:Milky Way : Nebula : Appearance : Dark : Molecular Cloud
Milky Way : Galaxy
Catégorie:Galaxies
Nebulae

Formats des images

Grand JPEG
1,0 Mio
JPEG taille écran
245,4 Kio

Fonds d'écran

1024x768
427,2 Kio
1280x1024
668,0 Kio
1600x1200
917,7 Kio
1920x1200
1,1 Mio
2048x1536
1,3 Mio

Couleurs & filtres

DomaineLongueur d'ondeTélescope
Infrarouge Other
Infrarouge Other
Millimétrique
Submillimetre
870 μmAtacama Pathfinder Experiment
LABOCA