Details of the HAWK-I view of the Milky Way’s central region

This beautiful image of the Milky Way’s central region, taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows interesting features of this part of our galaxy. This image highlights the Nuclear Star Cluster (NSC) right in the centre and the Arches Cluster, the densest cluster of stars in the Milky Way. Other features include the Quintuplet cluster, which contains five prominent stars, and a region of ionised hydrogen gas (HII).