Peering through the dust to see our galaxy's heart
In short: The Milky Way's core is hidden from our view by dense clouds of cosmic dust. This video explains how infrared technology allows us to pierce that veil and observe the violent birth of massive stars.
Because visible light is blocked by intervening dust, astronomers use infrared light to see into the galactic center. A specific 300-light-year wide panorama provides a laboratory for studying how massive stars form and impact their environments within violent nuclear regions.
Spitzer Space Telescope information was merged with Hubble’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) to produce this visual. To capture this level of detail, the NICMOS mosaic required 144 orbits of the Hubble Space Telescope to complete 2,304 individual exposures.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Exploring The Core Of The Milky Way Galaxy
- Also: Core of the Milky Way - NASA Science
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