Astronomers take an unprecedented, x-ray view of the black hole in the center of the Milky Way.
by Jacqueline Howard
This new, unprecedented image of the Milky Way shows that our galaxy's core is a pretty tumultuous place.
The compiled image of photos taken by the European Space Agency's x-ray satellite XMM-Newton (above)
spans 1,000 light-years in the center of the galaxy, and shows dying
stars, powerful winds, hot gas and, most notably, a supermassive black
hole.
The galactic black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A*, and its surrounding emission are located in the brightest central region of the image.
Black holes don't emit light. But as the
objects that surround Sagittarius A* in the Milky Way's center are
pulled in by the black hole's strong gravitational grasp, the
interaction emits light at various wavelengths, including x-rays.
This magnification shows the central 100 light-years of the galaxy's violent core.
Here, only soft x-ray emissions are shown.
After analyzing the image, an international team of astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has
not only concluded that the center of the galaxy is a dramatic place,
but that Sagittarius A* may be partly to blame for the tumult.
The black hole is so ginormous that it has a mass a few million times that of our sun. The new image of our galaxy's center may provide important insight into how our Milky Way and its black hole are evolving.
A paper describing the new image was published online in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on August 19, 2015.
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