NASA Photo of the The Galactic Center
Here is a link to a magnificent photograph taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of the Milky Way’s Galactic Center. Because of dust clouds that hide the light of the stars in the Galactic Center, infrared photography was used, melding over 2,000 photographic images into this one amazing photograph.
Images of the Galactic Center are especially appropriate at this time because of the anticipated line up of the Sun and Earth with the Galactic Center on the Winter Solstice around December 21, 2012.
Just click on the link below the excerpt from the NASA web site:
Explanation: What’s happening at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy? To help find out, the orbiting Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have combined their efforts to survey the region in unprecedented detail in infrared light. Infrared light is particularly useful for probing the Milky Way’s center because visible light is more greatly obscured by dust. The above image encompasses over 2,000 images from the Hubble Space Telescope‘s NICMOS taken last year. The image spans 300 by 115 light years with such high resolution that structures only 20 times the size of our own Solar System are discernable.
APOD: 2009 January 7 – The Galactic Core in Infrared
Copyright (c) 2009 Carol Chapman
