The 'Downtown' Milky Way -An X-Ray View

X-Ray vision is normally associated with Superman, but NASA is using it on a foe that would dwarf even the Man of Steel: a supermassive black hole.  Hidden at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A-star is the mass of three million suns, bigger than the solar system, and basically makes Krypton look like an unimpressive pebble.

This NASA/MIT X-ray image shows the region within 10 light-years of the center of the Milky Way. X-ray glow emanates from an extended cloud of hot gas surrounding the galaxy's core, indicated by arrow.

In real life the ability to emit X-rays from your eyes would suck pretty hard - for one thing you'd die, and the only thing you'd see before then is other people getting cancer.  Not a jolly thought.  The real trick is in receiving X-rays, like the ones that constantly bombard the Earth from all corners of the galaxy.  We don't need to stagger around in unfashionable lead clothing because most of this cosmic rays are absorbed in the upper atmosphere, which is why NASA hoisted the CHANDRA X-ray observatory satellite into orbit on the Columbia space shuttle in 1999.

Just like in the hospital, X-ray images are useful because you can see through things that visible light can't penetrate.  Studying highly energetic areas like the galactic core, the problem isn't that there's too little light - but too much.  Vast clouds of material emit constantly, which is frustrating because they're often sitting right in front of the really interesting things - and until we invent the Starship Enterprise we can't just move a bit (several light years) to the side and look around.  X-rays, emitted from high energy objects, can penetrate these annoying obstacles and be observed from our vantage point here on Earth.

One of the most studied objects is Sagittarius A-star, the center of our galaxy, the Big Kahuna of all star-devouring Kahunas.  It's brain-breakingly vast, it's devouring all it encounters - but not as much as it could.  Observations indicate that either the space-time singularity isn't swallowing as much material as is possible, or some unknown factor is blocking the resulting radiation from making its way to us.  Whichever is the answer, the question is extremely interesting - tied up with our very understanding of how the core of the Milky Way operates.  Which is kind of a big deal.  We live in the suburbs of the giant, spiral Milky Way. Earth is about 25,000 light years from the teeming, tumultuous Galactic Center where most of the action takes place.

One thing is sure - CHANDRA is certainly fulfilling its function of honoring Nobel prizewinner Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the physicist it's named after.  Professor Chandasekhar established key physics leading down the path to black holes before other physicists even believed it was possible, and years later CHANDRA is both asking and answering more questions on these fascinating phenomena.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

CHANDRA examines downtown Milky Way  http://cxc.harvard.edu/newsletters/news_12/downtown.html
CHANDRA Satellite http://chandra.harvard.edu/

Comments

[Hollywood Riot]

the next Superman movie plot line was just leaked: Lois Lane gets breast cancer and doctors can't figure out how or why, except that her chest had been bombarded with massive amounts of X-rays for years...

[x-ray fluorescence]

Hey its a great view from the x-ray.These x-ray images are useful in so many fields.Thanks for posting the photos and such a useful information...