Cold Dust

The pink horizontal feature near the bottom of this image is the Milky Way. Connected to it are giant filamentary structures composed of cold dust color coded by temperature, reddish denoting cooler to whitish corresponding with warmer.

Credit: ESA and the HFI Consortium, IRAS

The Milky Way's Spiral Structure And Our Place In It

Infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope have enabled scientists to map a new view of the Milky Way's elegant spiral structure. It is dominated by two major arms--Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus--and two minor arms--Norma and Sagittarius--which are located between the major arms. A radio-telescope survey also mapped a new spiral arm--the Far-3 kiloparsec arm--which lies along the central bar of the Milky Way.


In this annotated version of the map, our sun is show between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms near a small, partial arm called the Orion Arm, or Orion Spur.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Just Another Day at NASA

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has broken the distance limit for galaxies and uncovered a primordial population of compact and ultra-blue galaxies that have never been seen before...

This is the deepest image of the Universe ever taken in near-infrared light by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The faintest and reddest objects (left inset) in the image are galaxies that correspond to lookback times of approximately 12.9 billion years to 13.1 billion years. No galaxies have been seen before at such early epochs. -- Press Release

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: New, very deep exposure of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy (Sagittarius A*).

Astronomers have long known that the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), is a particularly poor eater. The fuel for this black hole comes from powerful winds blown off dozens of massive young stars that are concentrated nearby. These stars are located a relatively large distance away from Sgr A*, where the gravity of the black hole is weak, and so their high-velocity winds are difficult for the black hole to capture and swallow. Scientists have previously calculated that Sgr A* should consume only about 1% of the fuel carried in the winds. However, it now appears that Sgr A* consumes even less than expected -- Press Release

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has taken this infrared portrait of the Small Magellanic Cloud, revealing the stars and dust in this galaxy as never seen before. The Small Magellanic Cloud is a nearby satellite galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, approximately 200,000 light-years away.

Infrared light is color-coded in the new picture, so that blue shows older stars, green shows organic dust and red highlights dust-enshrouded star formation. -- Press Release

Milky Way Panorama

All-Sky Milky Way Panorama 2.0 is a digital compilation of over 3,000 images comprising the highest resolution digital panorama of the entire night sky yet created. Interactive zoom version. Credit & Copyright: Axel Mellinger (Central Mich. U) Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific 121, 1180-1187 (2009).

Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra Composite of the Milky Way's Galactic Center

In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, NASA's Great Observatories -- the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- have produced a matched trio of images of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy. Each image shows the telescope's different wavelength view of the galactic center region, illustrating the unique science each observatory conducts. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI

Spitzer's infrared-light observations provide a detailed and spectacular view of the galactic center region. The swirling core of our galaxy harbors hundreds of thousands of stars that cannot be seen in visible light. These stars heat the nearby gas and dust. These dusty clouds glow in infrared light and reveal their often dramatic shapes. Some of these clouds harbor stellar nurseries that are forming new generations of stars. Like the downtown of a large city, the center of our galaxy is a crowded, active, and vibrant place. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, E. Churchwell (University of Wisconsin), SSC, and STScI

X-rays detected by Chandra expose a wealth of exotic objects and high-energy features. In this image, pink represents lower energy X-rays and blue indicates higher energy. Hundreds of small dots show emission from material around black holes and other dense stellar objects. A supermassive black hole -- some four million times more massive than the Sun -- resides within the bright region in the lower right. The diffuse X-ray light comes from gas heated to millions of degrees by outflows from the supermassive black hole, winds from giant stars, and stellar explosions. This central region is the most energetic place in our galaxy. Credit: NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al.

Although best known for its visible-light images, Hubble also observes over a limited range of infrared light. The galactic center is marked by the bright patch in the lower right. Along the left side are large arcs of warm gas that have been heated by clusters of bright massive stars. In addition, Hubble uncovered many more massive stars across the region. Winds and radiation from these stars create the complex structures seen in the gas throughout the image. This sweeping panorama is one of the sharpest infrared pictures ever made of the galactic center region. Credit: NASA, ESA, Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), and STScI

Infrared Astronomical Satellite's View of the Sky

Nearly the entire sky, as seen in infrared wavelengths and projected at one-half degree resolution, is shown in this image, assembled from six months of data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, or IRAS. The bright horizontal band is the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, with the center of the galaxy located at the center of the picture. (Because of its proximity, the Milky Way dominates our view of the entire sky, as seen in this image. IRAS data processed to show smaller regions of the sky, however, reveal thousands of sources beyond the Milky Way.) The colors represent infrared emission detected in three of the telescope's four wavelength bands (blue is 12 microns; green is 60 microns, and red is 100 microns). Hotter material appears blue or white while the cooler material appears red. The hazy, horizontal S-shaped feature that crosses the image is faint heat emitted by dust in the plane of the solar system. Celestial objects visible in the photo are regions of star formation in the constellation Ophiucus (directly above the galactic center) and Orion (the two brightest spots below the plane, far right). The Large Magellanic Cloud is the relatively isolated spot located below the plane, right of center. Black stripes are regions of the sky that were not scanned by the telescope in its first six months of operation. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Galactic Center

New Vista of Milky Way Center Unveiled

A dramatic new vista of the center of the Milky Way galaxy from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory exposes new levels of the complexity and intrigue in the Galactic center. The mosaic of 88 Chandra pointings represents a freeze-frame of the spectacle of stellar evolution, from bright young stars to black holes, in a crowded, hostile environment dominated by a central, supermassive black hole.

The diffuse X-ray light is from gas that has been heated by stellar explosions, outflows powered by the central supermassive black hole and winds from massive stars.

The thousands of point sources are produced by normal stars feeding material onto compact, stellar remnants: black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs.

Credit: NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al.

Milky Way Panorama (dive in...)

ESO unveils an amazing, interactive, 360-degree panoramic view of the entire night sky. The first of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project — a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO’s observing sites in Chile — has just been released online. The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world. ... [Full Press Release]

Credit: Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier