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Galactic Center
25 Images to Celebrate NASA's Chandra 25th Anniversary
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its launch, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is releasing 25 never-before-seen views of a wide range of cosmic objects.
Milky Way Galactic Centre
Colour composite of the Galactic Centre
Colour composite image of the Galactic Centre at a distance of about 30,000 light-years. It was made by combining images in filters centred at 8.6μm (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon molecular feature - coded blue), 12.8μm ([NeII] - coded green) and 19.5μm (coded red). Each pixel subtends 0.127...
Milky Way Galactic Centre
K-band image of the Galactic Centre
K-band image of the central 6 x 13 square arcsec around the Galactic Centre obtained by MACAO-VLTI under average atmospheric conditions (0.8 arcsec seeing) with an exposure time of 90 seconds. Although the 14.6 magnitude guide star is located roughly 20 arcsec from the field centre - this...
Milky Way Galactic Centre
Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths
This picture shows the more familiar view in visible light, where most of the more distant structures are hidden from view. This is part of an image comparison.
Milky Way
Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths
This image shows the same part of sky again at even shorter wavelengths, the near-infrared, as seen by ESO’s VISTA infrared survey telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Regions appearing as dark dust tendrils here show up brightly in the ATLASGAL view. This image is part of a...
Milky Way
Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths
This image shows the same region as seen in shorter, infrared, wavelengths by the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope.This image is part of a comparison image. This image is part of a comparison image.
Milky Way
Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths
The top panel shows compact sources of submillimetre radiation detected by APEX as part of the ATLASGAL survey, combined with complementary data from ESA’s Planck satellite, to capture more extended features. This image is part of a comparison image.
Galactic Center
NASA Telescope Data Becomes Music You Can Play
A new collaboration is enabling actual data from NASA telescopes to be used as the basis for original music that humans can play.
Galactic Center
Chandra Takes In The Bright Lights, Big City Of The Milky Way
A 400 by 900 light-year mosaic of images located about 25,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius.
Sagittarius A*
Milky Way Monster Stars in Cosmic Reality Show
This image of Sgr A* was made from the longest X-ray exposure of that region to date.
Milky Way Galactic Centre
Wide-field view of the centre of the Milky Way
This visible light wide-field view shows the rich star clouds in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) in the direction of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The entire image is filled with vast numbers of stars — but far more remain hidden behind clouds of dust and are only revealed...
Sagittarius A*
A view of the Milky Way supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* in polarised light
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of our Milky Way black hole released in 2022, has captured a new view of the massive object at the centre of our Galaxy: how it looks in polarised light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to...
Milky Way Galactic Centre
First image of our black hole
This is the first image of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It’s the first direct visual evidence of the presence of this black hole. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array which linked together eight existing radio observatories across...
Milky Way Galactic Centre
The galactic centre
The view of the centre of our galaxy with a closer view of the object known as Sagittarius A*, the bright radio source that corresponds to the supermassive black hole.
Milky Way Galactic Centre
HAWK-I view of the Milky Way’s central region (close-up)
This image features a close-up of a wide-field, near-infrared view of the central region of the Milky Way, taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope.
Milky Way Galactic Centre
View of the galactic centre
View of the Galactic centre captured with ESO's VISTA infrared survey telescope, as part of the Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) ESO public survey.
Milky Way Galactic Centre
HAWK-I view of the Milky Way’s central region
Taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this stunning image shows the Milky Way’s central region with an angular resolution of 0.2 arcseconds. This means the level of detail picked up by HAWK-I is roughly equivalent to seeing a football...
Milky Way Galactic Centre
Wide-field view of the centre of the Milky Way
This visible light wide-field view shows the rich star clouds in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) in the direction of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The entire image is filled with vast numbers of stars — but far more remain hidden behind clouds of dust and are only revealed...
VVV CL002
VISTA view of the newly discovered globular cluster VVV CL002 close to the centre of the Milky Way
This image from VISTA is a tiny part of the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey that is systematically studying the central parts of the Milky Way in infrared light. In the centre lies the faint newly found globular star cluster, VVV CL002. This previously unknown globular, which...
Terzan 5
Around the star cluster Terzan 5
This wide-field image, based on data from Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the whole region around the stellar grouping Terzan 5.
Milky Way
A 340-million pixel starscape from Paranal
The second of three images of ESO’s GigaGalaxy Zoom project is a new and wonderful 340-million-pixel vista of the central parts of our galactic home, a 34 by 20-degree wide image that provides us with a view as experienced by amateur astronomers around the world. Taken by Stéphane Guisard, an...
Galactic Centre
GigagalaxyZoom phase 2
The two first images of ESO’s GigaGalaxy Zoom project combined to show a whole view of the Milky Way as could be seen with the unaided eye, and a more central region observed with an amateur telescope.
Milky Way Galactic Centre
The Galactic Centre and Sagittarius B2
Colour-composite image of the Galactic Centre and Sagittarius B2 as seen by the ATLASGAL survey. The centre of the Milky Way is home to a supermassive black hole more than four million times the mass of our Sun. It is about 25 000 light years from Earth. Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2) is one of the...
Arches Cluster
The Arches cluster
This image of the Arches Cluster of young, massive stars was obtained with NACO on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The field of view is 28 arcseconds. North is up and east is to the left. This image is a composite of infrared images obtained through J, H and K filters. The stars appear as bright...
Milky Way Galactic Centre
Submillimetre and infrared view of the Galactic Centre
This is a colour composite image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy, about 26 000 light years from Earth. Giant clouds of gas and dust are shown in blue, as detected by the LABOCA instrument on the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope at submillimetre wavelengths (870...
Atacama Pathfinder Experiment
View of the Galactic Plane from the ATLASGAL survey (annotated and in five sections)
Colour-composite annotated image of part of the Galactic Plane seen by the ATLASGAL survey, divided into sections. In this image, the ATLASGAL submillimetre-wavelength data are shown in red, overlaid on a view of the region in infrared light, from the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) in green...
Milky Way Galactic Centre
Around the Arches Cluster
The turbulent central region of our Milky Way is shown in this beautiful picture taken with the Wide Field Imager attached to the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope. Near the centre of the image — and of our Galaxy — a supermassive black hole lurks (see ESO Press Release eso0846). Dense dust found...
Galactic Centre
One million stars — towards the dark heart of the Milky Way*
With this remarkable VISTA mosaic we look deep into the dusty heart of our own Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer). About one million stars are revealed in this picture, most of them not seen in visible light pictures. As well as absorbing light, the dust also...
Milky Way Galactic Centre
HAWK-I view of the Milky Way’s central region
Taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this stunning image shows the Milky Way’s central region with an angular resolution of 0.2 arcseconds. This means the level of detail picked up by HAWK-I is roughly equivalent to seeing a football...
Raw image from the NACO instrument
A raw image straight from the NACO instrument on the VLT.
Milky Way
Images of gas cloud being ripped apart by the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way
New observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope show for the first time a gas cloud being ripped apart by the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. Shown here are VLT observations from 2006, 2010 and 2013, coloured blue, green and red respectively. Due to its distance, and the...
Milky Way
Gas cloud being ripped apart by the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way
New observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope show how a gas cloud now passing close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy is being ripped apart. The horizontal axis shows the extent of the cloud along its orbit and the vertical axis shows the velocities of different...
Milky Way
Images of gas cloud being ripped apart by the black hole at the centre of the galaxy
These observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope, using the SINFONI instrument, show how a gas cloud is being stretched and ripped apart as it passes close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. The horizontal axis shows the extent of the cloud along its orbit and the...
Milky Way
Gas cloud being ripped apart by the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way (annotated)
New observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope show how a gas cloud now passing close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy is being ripped apart. The horizontal axis shows the extent of the cloud along its orbit and the vertical axis shows the velocities of different...
Sagittarius A*
Cloudlets swarm around our local supermassive black hole
This image from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows the area surrounding Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that lurks at the centre of the Milky Way — highlighted here with a small circle. New research has revealed exciting evidence of interstellar gas and...
Galactic Centre
Looking into the Milky Way’s heart — ISAAC observes the Galactic Centre
The centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is again in the sights of ESO telescopes. This time it’s the turn of ISAAC, the VLT’s near- and mid-infrared spectrometer and camera. From Chile’s Atacama Desert, site of the ESO observatories, the Milky Way offers magnificent views, particularly in...
Black hole
First image of our black hole (with wider background)
This is the first image of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, with an added black background to fit wider screens. It’s the first direct visual evidence of the presence of this black hole. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array which linked...
Sagittarius A*
Stars around Sgr A* in June 2021
This image show stars orbiting very close to Sgr A* (centre), the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. They were obtained with the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the end of June 2021.
Sagittarius A*
Stars around Sgr A* in March 2021
This image show stars orbiting very close to Sgr A* (centre), the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. They were obtained with the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the end of March 2021.
Sagittarius A*
Stars around Sgr A* in May 2021
This image show stars orbiting very close to Sgr A* (centre), the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. They were obtained with the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the end of May 2021.
Sagittarius A*
Stars around Sgr A* in July 2021
This image show stars orbiting very close to Sgr A* (centre), the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. They were obtained with the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the end of July 2021.
NACO observation of the stars at the centre of the Milky Way
This image is one of hundreds collected using the NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile over a two-decade period to monitor the motions of stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
Galactic Centre
The centre of the Milky Way*
The central parts of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, as observed in the near-infrared with the NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. By following the motions of the most central stars over more than 16 years, astronomers were able to determine the mass of the supermassive black hole that...
RR Lyr
Variable stars close to the galactic centre
This image, captured with the VISTA infrared survey telescope, as part of the Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) ESO public survey, shows the central part of the Milky Way. While normally hidden behind obscuring dust, the infrared capabilities of VISTA allow to study the stars close to the...
Galactic Center
Hokupa'a image of full field of Galactic Center
Hokupa'a image of full field of Galactic Center (JHK' color composite).
Gemini North
IRS-8 Bow-Shock
RS-8 smaller field JHK' color composite and K' image with stars subtracted. See https://www.gemini.edu/gallery/media/irs-8-bow-shock for more information.
Sagittarius B1
Peering through the dust
This Picture of the Week shows an infrared view of Sagittarius B1, a region close to the centre of the Milky Way, imaged with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. The centre of our galaxy is an exotic environment, densely populated with stars, and has been suggested to have more star...
Sagittarius C
Hiding in the crowd
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...
Arches Cluster
Star Factory Near Galactic Center Bathed In High-Energy X-Rays
This composite image shows an envelope of 60-million-degree gas around a young cluster of stars, known as the Arches cluster.
Milky Way Galactic Centre
The centre of the Milky Way
The centre of our Milky Way galaxy is located in the southern constellation Sagittarius (The Archer) and is "only" 26,000 light-years away. On high-resolution images, it is possible to discern thousands of individual stars within the central, one light-year wide region. Using the motions of...
S2
The motion of a star around the central black hole in the Milky Way
The left panel shows an infrared NACO image of a ~ 2 x 2 arcsec 2 area, centred on the position of the compact radio source "SgrA*" at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy; it is marked by a small cross. The image was obtained in the K s -band at wavelength 2.1 µm in May 2002 and the angular...
A new collection of stunning images highlights data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes.
Sagittarius C
Sagittarius C (NIRCam Image)
The full view of the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals a 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense center. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. A...
Bow-Shock
IRS-8 Bow-Shock
The object, known by the unglamorous name of IRS8, was only an ill-defined smudge until Gemini came along. Now, the Gemini telescope's advanced optics show that IRS8 appears to be a star that is plowing through a poorly understood gas and dust cloud near the galactic center. Moving relative to...
Sgr A*
MINI-JET FOUND NEAR MILKY WAY’S SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE
Hubble Finds a Smoldering Remnant in a Blast From the Past
Milky Way
SEYFERT FLARE ILLUSTRATION
INTENSE FLASH FROM MILKY WAY'S BLACK HOLE ILLUMINATED GAS FAR OUTSIDE OF OUR GALAXY
Slime Mold
COSMIC WEB AND SLIME MOLD
TRACING THE LOCATION OF THE COSMIC WEB USING SLIME MOLD SIMULATIONS
Milky Way
Milky Way Raids Intergalactic 'Bank Accounts,' Hubble Study Finds
Astronomers have discovered an unexplained surplus of gas flowing into our Milky Way after conducting a galaxy-wide audit of outflowing and inflowing gas. Rather than a gas equilibrium and "balanced books," 10 years of data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show there is more gas coming in than...
Magellanic Stream
Hubble Measures Content of the Leading Arm of the Magellanic Stream
Hubble Measures the Content of the Leading Arm of the Magellanic Stream
Milky Way
Hubble's Journey to the Center of Our Galaxy
Hubble's infrared vision pierced the dusty heart of our Milky Way galaxy to reveal more than half a million stars at its core. Except for a few blue, foreground stars, the stars are part of the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster, the most massive and densest stellar cluster in our galaxy. Located...
