The picture shows the intricate structure formed by gas at the center of our galaxy.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, FLORIDA — The American Antarctic Agency (NASAS) has unveiled stunning images at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. Images revealed with X-ray and radio wavelengths NASA it captures the chaotic region of the gas thread.
The image is a mosaic of various images taken by NASA’s Chanda X-ray Observatory. The picture shows the intricate structure formed by gas at the center of our galaxy.
Reported in Digital Trends, Monday (31/5), the center of the galaxy is the region around the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A*. The black hole is the part of the white-purple blob in the center of the image. You can’t actually see the black hole, but you can see the hot dust around it.
Thanks to Chandra looking at X-ray wavelengths, the image shows a high-energy view of the region.
X-rays of various energies observed by Chandra are shown in orange, green, blue, and purple, and radio data from the MeerKAT radio telescope is shown in purple and gray.
The gas threads form this complex structure due to their interaction with the magnetic field. We see a similar effect on Earth when the sun emits charged particles that travel through the solar system and interact with Earth’s atmosphere as space weather.
But at the center of the galaxy, it’s not just a single sun driving space weather, it’s driven by multiple stars and by far more dramatic phenomena such as supernova explosions.
In addition to the thread, the image also shows a galactic clump, where large structures of hot gas are being ejected from the region and extend some 700 light-years above and below the galactic plane.
“The gas was most likely heated by supernova explosions and recent magnetic reconnections near the galactic center,” NASA wrote.
According to NASA, such reconnection events in the Galaxy are usually not energetic enough to be detected in X-rays, except for the most energetic ones at the Galactic center, where the interstellar magnetic field is much stronger.
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