Hiding in the crowd

Eso_potw2407a_1024

eso_potw2407a February 12th, 2024

Credit: ESO/F. Nogueras-Lara et al.

Hundreds of thousands of stars are contained in this Picture of the Week, an infrared image of Sagittarius C, a region near the centre of the Milky Way. Taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this image is helping astronomers unlock a stellar puzzle. The centre of the Milky Way is the most prolific star-forming region in the entire galaxy.  However, astronomers have only found a fraction of the young stars they expected here: there is “fossil” evidence that many more stars were born in the recent past than the ones we actually see. This is because looking towards the centre of the galaxy is not an easy task: clouds of dust and gas block the light from the stars and obscure the view. Infrared instruments, such as the HAWK-I camera on the VLT, allow astronomers to peer through these clouds and reveal the starry landscape beyond. In a recent study, Francisco Nogueras Lara, an astronomer at ESO in Germany, analysed VLT data of Sagittarius C, a region whose chemical composition made it a promising candidate to host recently formed stars. And it delivered: he found that this region was much richer in young stars than other areas in the galactic centre. Looking to similar regions, now, is a promising lead to find the other missing young stars.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2407a/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, None, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Sagittarius C
Subject - Milky Way
Star
Eso_potw2407a_1280
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ID
potw2407a
Subject Category
B.3  
Subject Name
Sagittarius C
Credits
ESO/F. Nogueras-Lara et al.
Release Date
2024-02-12T06:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2407a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Instrument
Color Assignment
Band
Bandpass
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
9113.0, 4042.0
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
European Southern Observatory
URL
https://www.eso.org
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
None
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
European Southern Observatory
Publisher ID
eso
Resource ID
potw2407a
Metadata Date
2024-02-01T17:45:22+01:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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