Stars and Gas Orbiting the Massive Black Hole

Our Milky Way, like many other galaxies, harbors a massive black hole at its center that greatly influences the evolution of the nearby stars and gas. This image of the Milky Way's central region combines data over a wide range of wavelengths and include radio images from the NRAO Very Large Array (green) and BIMA (red) as well as an infrared image from the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope (blue). The red, green and blue colors represent, respectively, the cold gas, warm gas, and stars that are orbiting the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, SgrA*. Note the three-armed appearance of the ionized gas in the radio image that is superimposed on the distribution of the much colder molecular HCN emission.

Legacy Astronomical Images

NRAO/AUI/NSF does not hold full copyright for this image. Contact the archivist for details.

Legacy Astronomical Image

Sgr A

F. Yusef-Zadeh (Northwestern University), M. C. H. Wright (UC Berkeley), S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center)

Very Large Array (VLA)

continuum

K

1.2 cm

22 GHz

RA 17:45:40.000, Dec: -20:0:28.000

0.033333 x 0.033333 degrees

Contact the archivist for a high resolution tif of this image.

Galactic Sources Series

Black Holes Unit