NASA | MSFC | SAO | Chandra X-ray Observatory | 2020 Jun 02
By combining data from telescopes with supercomputer simulations and virtual reality (VR), a new visualization allows you to experience 500 years of cosmic evolution around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.A Tour of a New Galactic Center Adventure in Virtual RealityClick to play embedded YouTube video.
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)
This visualization, called "Galactic Center VR", is the latest in a series from astrophysicists, and is based on data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. This new installment features their NASA supercomputer simulations of material streaming toward the Milky Way's four-million-solar-mass black hole known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). The visualization has been loaded into a VR environment as a novel method of exploring these simulations, and is available for free at both the Steam and Viveport VR stores.
The researchers modeled winds from 25 very bright and massive objects known as Wolf-Rayet stars, which permeate the central few light years of the galaxy as they orbit Sgr A*. Wolf-Rayet stars produce so much light that they blow off their outer layers into space to create supersonic winds. Watch as some of this material is captured by the black hole's gravity and plummets toward it. ...