The centre of the Milky Way
The centre of our Milky Way galaxy is located in the southern constellation Sagittarius (The Archer) and is "only" 26,000 light-years away. On high-resolution images, it is possible to discern thousands of individual stars within the central, one light-year wide region.
Using the motions of these stars to probe the gravitational field, observations over the last decade have shown that a mass of about 3 million times that of the Sun is concentrated within a radius of only 10 light-days of the compact radio and X-ray source SgrA* (Sagittarius A) at the centre of the star cluster. This means that SgrA* is the most likely counterpart of the black hole believed to exist at the centre of our Galaxy.
This image was obtained in mid-2002 with the NACO instrument at the 8.2-m VLT Yepun telescope. It combines frames in three infrared wavebands between 1.6 and 3.5 µm. The compact objects are stars and their colours indicate their temperature (blue ="hot", red ="cool"). There is also diffuse infrared emission from interstellar dust between the stars.
A newer image of that region has been published in 2008; see image eso0846a.
Créditos:ESO
Sobre a imagem
Id: | eso0226a |
Tipo: | Observação |
Data de divulgação: | 16 de Outubro de 2002 |
Notícias relacionadas: | eso0226 |
Tamanho: | 2598 x 2362 px |
Sobre o objeto
Nome: | Milky Way Galactic Centre |
Tipo: | Milky Way : Galaxy |
Distância: | 25000 anos-luz |
Constellation: | Sagittarius |
Categoria: | Galaxies |
Papéis de parede
Coordenadas
Position (RA): | 17 45 40.04 |
Position (Dec): | -29° 0' 26.95" |
Field of view: | 0.30 x 0.28 arcminutes |
Orientação: | O norte está a 0.3° à direita da vertical |
Cores e filtros
Banda | Comprimento de onda | Telescópio |
---|---|---|
Infravermelho K | 2.18 μm | Very Large Telescope NACO |