Posted 03.18.2011 at 4:42 pm
8 Comments
Downtown, Milky Way
NASA/JPL-Caltech
The center of the Milky Way is hard to see in visible light, because interstellar dust blocks our view. But the Spitzer Space Telescope’s infrared vision can penetrate the dust and see through to our galaxy’s jam-packed core.
This is a newly updated version of the plane of the Milky Way captured by the Spitzer telescope. NASA says the area shown here is immense: Horizontally, it spans 2,400 light years, or 5.3 degrees of the sky, and vertically it covers 1,360 light years, or 3 degrees.
The bright center is the galaxy’s central star cluster, about 26,000 light years from Earth. The green and yellowish areas represent dust associated with star-forming regions, NASA explains.
The glowing galactic center actually represents thousands of stars orbiting a massive black hole, but it is so far away that the light blurs together, NASA explains.
The image is a three-color composite of observations from two instruments on board Spitzer.
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Great filamentary structures surrounding the galactic center very indicative of the electromagnetic forces at work in this amazing galaxy of ours.
Amazing photo. Could we ask for anything better?
And this, is only 1 of many... mind blowing.
Douglife.. I could ask for a bigger, higher def photo?
i am simply obsessed with the universe. i can look at pictures and dream about it all day long.
heres the link for the wallpaper version of this picture:
www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/index.cfm?category=featured
all this is amazing to look at in pictures, but just imagine if you could see it with your own eyes... i wish beyond light speed travel or wormhole travel or whatever would be invented in my lifetime
a direct link to the huge sized image:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/529425main_pia13932-full_full.jpg
I know what you mean SlushiTee3092, it's spectacular, but rushing through it and around it and not having it be cropped at the edges of our tiny monitors. I can only think that it would feel the way the 1st explorers must have when they started across the seas in small vessels, awe inspiring and overwhelming at the same time.
And this is just our own little neighborhood... it seems that "space" gets bigger and bigger every day as we find more and more stars, planets, unseen objects.. truely amazing.