An Electrifying View of the Heart of the Milky Way

[Zorro]

A new radio-wave image of the center of our galaxy reveals all the forms of frenzy that a hundred million or so stars can get up to.

Noise and chaos reign at the heart of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, or so it appears in an astonishing image captured recently by astronomers in South Africa.

The image, taken by the MeerKAT radio telescope, an array of 64 antennas spread across five miles of desert in northern South Africa, reveals a storm of activity in the central region of the Milky Way, with threads of radio emission laced and kinked through space among bubbles of energy. At the very center Sagittarius A*, a well-studied supermassive black hole, emits its own exuberant buzz.

We are accustomed to seeing galaxies, from afar, as soft, glowing eggs of light or as majestic, bejeweled whirlpools. Rarely do we glimpse the roiling beneath the clouds — all the forms of frenzy that a hundred million or so stars can get up to.

The image was captured and analyzed by a team of astronomers led by Ian Heywood of Oxford University and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. They published their results last week in the Astrophysical Journal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/science/milky-way.html

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Wow. Thank you for posting.

My Son The Astronomer is doing exoplanet research, so this is a bit out of his field, but he still tends to understand other parts of astronomy.

I will add that, for those who read the article, that these days most astronomy is done NOT with visible light, but with radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, and probably others I can't name. Which is why modern astronomers almost never spend time actually at the telescope, but are analyzing the data collected.

I have visited the VLA, Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New Mexico. First time in 1999. They used to have astronomer dormitories, because astronomers would go there to do observations. The last time I was there, eight or so years ago, they were tearing down those dorms because now they could gather the information/observations and email them to the astronomers.

How wonderful is the World Wide Web.

[hedda_foil]

3. Let's see if I can post the image here.

[electric_blue68]

4. Wow. Ty!

[Zorro]

5. Here's another one from the article

Another close-up shows a cloud known as G359.1-0.5, the glowing remains of a supernova explosion. To its left, the Mouse, a runaway pulsar possibly formed and ejected by the supernova. To its right, a radio-wave-emitting filament known as the Snake. Credit I. Heywood, SARAO

[Hortensis]

7. Incredible. Thanks for these, guys.

[lambchopp59]

6. I vote we send Cheeto Mussolini there

Fill a rocket with enough McDonald's hamburgers 🍔 fan the fumes in Donny's general location, invite his supporters to join him on the most important planet salvaging mission ever...

[dalton99a]

8. Kick