Researchers have managed to construct a never-before-seen map of the central engine at the center of the Milky Way.
The incredible new map of this part of our galaxy took four years to complete and shows the link between magnetic fields and cold dust structures that linger in the central engine of the Milky Way.
It’s this dust that forms building blocks for stars, planets, and eventually, life.
Having a map of the dust and magnetic interactions helps scientists better understand our galaxy, but also offers a chance to discover how they interact in the center of other galaxies in our solar system and universe.
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The team behind assembling the image was a NASA-funded project, led by Villanova University researchers.
David Chuss, research team leader and physics professor told Space: “The center of the Milky Way and most of the space between stars is filled with a lot of dust, and this is important for our galaxy’s life cycle.
“What we looked at was light emitted from these cool dust grains produced by heavy elements forged in stars and dispersed when those stars die and explode.”
Inside the heart of the Milky Way lives approximately 60 million solar masses of dust, scattered within the central molecular zone. The center is around minus 432.7 Fahrenheit, near above absolute zero, believed to be where atomic movement would stop. But there is also hotter gas which has been stripped of electrons in a state of ‘plasma’.
The scientists used the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) a telescope that circled the globe at 45,000 feet on a Boeing 747 plane, looking out at the cosmos.
An infrared map was assembled, spanning 500 light-years across the central engine of the Milky Way over nine flights.
The map was overlaid in layers, with pink showing the warm dust, and blue representing cool dust clouds and yellow showing radio-wave-emitting filaments.
“This is a journey, not a destination, but what we’ve found is this is a very complicated thing. The directions of the magnetic field vary all across the clouds at the center of the Milky Way,” Chuss added.
“This is the first step in trying to figure out how the field that we see in the radiowaves across these large organized filaments may relate to the rest of the dynamics of the center of the Milky Way.”
The team will continue to analyze the data over the next two years, hoping it’ll inspire others to construct new models to explain what is happening at the heart of the Milky Way.
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