Legacy Astronomical Images > Galactic Sources Series > Galactic Center Unit

Description

The center of our own Milky Way Galaxy is a whirlwind of activity. Stars at the Galactic center are born in clusters that are thousands of times more dense than what is typically seen in the disk of the Milky Way. Stars, along with molecular clouds and ionized gas, swirl around the very center of our Galaxy; around a black hole estimated to have the mass of a million suns.

Collection Items

Galactic Center Wide Field VLA Radio Image
Description: Forever hidden behind a thick veil of dust and gas, the center of our Milky Way Galaxy cannot be seen in visible light, the kind of light that our eyes see. In order to study the center of our Galaxy, astronomers must turn to other colors of light,…

Sagittarius A West Radial Velocity Map
Description: Image of the radial velocities (velocities toward/away from us) of hot, ionized gas in the inner 2 parsecs of the Galactic center. Blue and magenta colors represent gas moving toward us. Green and red colors show gas moving away from us. The motions…

Galactic Center
Description: The nucleus of the Milky Way Galaxy observed with the VLA at 1.3 cm at an angular resolution of 0.1 arcsec. Sgr A* (a compact radio source), located in the middle of this image, is believed to be associated with the supermassive black hole at the…

Sagittarius A West
Description: Radio continuum emission at 3.6 cm from the inner few parsecs of our Galaxy. The bright point source in the center is Sagittarius A*, which is likely a black hole at the center of the Galaxy. The mini-spiral of emission around the point source is…

Sagittarius A
Description: Nucleus of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. This radiograph shows the ionized gas (thermal emission) within the central 10 light years of our Galaxy. The compact nonthermal radio source has been subtracted from the map.

Sagittarius A at 6 cm
Description: VLA image of the Galactic Center source Sgr A at 6cm

Sagittarius A Radio Continuum
Description: The radio continuum observations of Sagittarius A (Sgr A) plus the continuum arc in the direction of Galactic Center at 20 cm. The most interesting result from our observations is the recognition of a system of narrow filamentary structures, which…

Sagittarius A
Description: Nucleus of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. Sagittarius A (Sgr A) at 1.3 x 2.5 arcsec resolution. An intensity-hue representation: intensity is 6 cm continuum (B, C, and D array 1983-1984) and color (hue) is spectral index between 6 and 20 cm. Blue is a…

Sagittarius A
Description: Halo surrounding the Sgr A East shell. The presence of an 8 arcmin diameter (24 pcs) structure surrounding the Sagittarius A (Sgr A) East shell can be seen in this image. This structure consists of two largescale components. One is a halo which…

Sagittarius A Filamentary Structure
Description: Filamentary structure near the Galactic Center. The radio continuum observations of Sagittarius A (Sgr A) plus the continuum arc in the direction of Galactic Center at 20 cm. The most interesting result from our observations is the recognition of a…

Sagittarius A Arched Filament Complex
Description: This is a VLA 20 cm continuum image showing the central ~60 pc of the Galactic Center with the most prominent extended radio features shown: the linear, magnetic filaments in the Radio Arc, Northern and Southern Threads and G359.8+0.2, and the…

Sagittarius A & Halo
Description: This is a pseudo-color representation of Sgr A and its halo at 90 cm (332 MHz). The coding of the brightness scale is indicated by the color bar. Sgr A East is a non-thermal shell source that could be a supernova remnant or a very low-luminosity…

Sagittarius A*
Description: At the center of the Milky Way lies a mysterious object of enormous mass, generally believed to be a black hole. All the gas, dust and stars in the galaxy, including our solar system, orbit this central point, called Sagittarius A* (pronounced…

Sagittarius B2 (North)
Description: The giant molecular cloud, known as Sagittarius B2 (North), as seen by the NSF's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico. This is the cloud in which scientists using the 12 Meter Telescope detected the simple sugar molecule…

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