Journey to the Center of the Galaxy
Explanation:
What wonders lie at the center of our Galaxy?
In
Jules Verne's
science fiction classic
A Journey
to the Center of the Earth, Professor Liedenbrock
and his fellow explorers encounter many strange and exciting wonders.
Astronomers already know of some of the
bizarre objects that exist at our
Galactic center, including
like
vast cosmic dust clouds,
bright star clusters,
swirling rings of gas, and even a
supermassive black hole.
Much of the Galactic Center is
shielded
from our view in visible light
by the intervening dust and gas, but it can be explored using
other forms of
electromagnetic radiation.
The
featured video is actually
a digital zoom into the
Milky Way's center which starts
by utilizing visible light images from the
Digitized Sky Survey.
As the movie proceeds, the light shown shifts to dust-penetrating
infrared
and highlights gas clouds that were recently
discovered
in 2013 to be falling toward central black hole.
In 2018 May,
observations of a
star passing near the Milky Way's central black hole showed, for the
first time, a
gravitational redshift of the star's light -- as expected from Einstein's
general relativity.
Highlights:
Recent
Total Lunar Eclipse
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
