Johns Hopkins University | 2019 Dec 18
Deep in our Milky Way galaxy’s center, a candy cane emerges as the centerpiece of a new, colorful composite image from a NASA camera, just in time for the holidays.The central zone of our galaxy hosts the Milky Way’s largest, densest collection of giant
molecular clouds, raw material for making tens of millions of stars. This image combines
archival infrared (blue), radio (red) and new microwave observations (green) from the
Goddard-developed GISMO instrument. The composite image reveals emission from cold
dust, areas of vigorous star formation, and filaments formed at the edges of a bubble
blown by some powerful event at the galaxy’s center. Credit: NASA/GSFC
The image—captured by a NASA-designed and built instrument called the Goddard-IRAM Superconducting 2-Millimeter Observer, or GISMO—shows the inner part of our galaxy, which hosts the largest, densest collection of giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way. These vast, cool clouds contain enough dense gas and dust to form tens of millions of stars like the Sun. The view spans a part of the sky about 1.5 degrees across, equivalent to roughly three times the apparent size of the Moon. ...
The studies detail how, after spending 8 hours looking at the sky and collecting data, GISMO detected the most prominent radio filament in the galactic center, making this the shortest wavelength where these curious structures have been observed. Scientists say the filaments delineate the edges of a large bubble produced by some energetic event at the galactic center. ...
The image is a composite of different color codes for emission mechanisms. Blue and cyan features reveal cold dust in molecular clouds where star formation is still in its infancy. Yellow features reveal the presence of ionized gas and show well-developed star factories; this light comes from electrons that are slowed but not captured by gas ions, a process also known as free-free emission. Red and orange regions show areas where synchrotron emission occurs, such as in the prominent Radio Arc and Sagittarius A, the bright source at the galaxy’s center that hosts its supermassive black hole. ...
GISMO Maps Inner Milky Way, Sees Cosmic ‘Candy Cane’
NASA | GSFC | 2019 Dec 18
New Image of Candy Cane-Shaped Feature in Center of Milky Way
University of California, Los Angeles | 2019 Dec 18
2 mm GISMO Observations of the Galactic Center. I. Dust Emission ~ Richard G. Arendt et al
- Astrophysical Journal 885(1):71 (2019 Nov 01) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab451c
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1909.08025 > 17 Sep 2019
Filament in the Radio Arc and Compact Sources ~ Johannes Staguhn et al
- Astrophysical Journal 885(1):72 (2019 Nov 01) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab451b
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1909.08026 > 17 Sep 2019
