This is a fantastic image directly from NASA’s archives and shows the wonders of the universe.
Note that some of the NASA spaces images have some slight blurring due to the subject, this is natural. You have your choice of size and finish for the photo. The size you choose may require cropping and the finished image may appear slightly different than the one shown. If preferred a white border can be added above/below or left/right to allow all of the original image to print. Unless requested when placing your order, your image may be cropped. If you would like to see how a specific image will look for the size you have chosen, please contact us and indicate the size you are interested in.
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Center of the Milky Way Galaxy
This infrared image of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy taken by Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This sweeping panorama is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the galactic core. It offers a nearby laboratory for how massive stars form and influence their environment in the often violent nuclear regions of other galaxies.
This view combines the sharp imaging of the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with color imagery from a previous Spitzer Space Telescope survey done with its Infrared Astronomy Camera (IRAC). The Galactic core is obscured in visible light by intervening dust clouds, but infrared light penetrates the dust. The spatial resolution of NICMOS corresponds to 0.025 light-years at the distance of the galactic core of 26,000 light-years. Hubble reveals details in objects as small as 20 times the size of our own solar system. The NICMOS images were taken between February 22 and June 5, 2008.
Object Name: Galactic Center
Object Description: Center of the Milky Way Galaxy
Position (J2000): R.A. 17h 45m 36s.00
Dec. -28° 55' 58".8
Constellation: Sagittarius
Distance: 26,000 light-years (8 kiloparsecs)
About the HST Data
Data Description: This image was composited from Hubble and Spitzer data. The Hubble component was from the HST proposal 11120: Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), S. Stolovy (Caltech), C. Lang (University of Iowa), A. Cotera (SETI Institute), M. Muno (Caltech), M. Morris (University of California, Los Angeles), D. Calzetti (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), S. Ramirez (Caltech), and G. Schneider (University of Arizona).
Instrument: NICMOS
Exposure Date(s): February 22 - June 5, 2008
About the Spitzer Data
Science Team: The Spitzer Space Telescope data were courtesy of NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/California Institute of Technology).
Instrument: Infrared Array Camera (IRAC)
Wavelength: 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (green), 5.8 microns (orange), 8.0 microns (red)
Exposure Date(s): September 3, 2004 and September 15, 2005
About the Release
Release Credit: NASA, ESA, Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), and S. Stolovy (Caltech)
Release Date: January 5, 2009