NASA releases stunning new pic of Milky Way’s ‘downtown’

https://www.cbs17.com/news/nasa-releases-stunning-new-pic-of-milky-ways-downtown/amp/

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) ”” NASA has released a stunning new picture of our galaxy’s violent, super-energized "downtown.”

It’s a composite of 370 observations over the past two decades by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, depicting billions of stars and countless black holes in the center, or heart, of the Milky Way. A radio telescope in South Africa also contributed to the image, for contrast.

Astronomer Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts Amherst said Friday he spent a year working on this while stuck at home during the pandemic.

"What we see in the picture is a violent or energetic ecosystem in our galaxy’s downtown,” Wang said in an email. "There are a lot of supernova remnants, black holes, and neutron stars there. Each X-ray dot or feature represents an energetic source, most of which are in the center.”

This busy, high-energy galactic center is 26,000 light years away.

His work appears in the June issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Launched in 1999, Chandra is in an extreme oval orbit around Earth.

Hi TMK,

Have you read up on the James Webb Space Telescope that is (finally) scheduled to be launched later this year? It will be -- by far -- the most powerful telescope ever developed.

This project has been planned for decades now -- and is generally considered one of the most important developments in physics since the Large Hadron Collider. It was being worked on even when I was an intern and co-op for NASA during college. It now has a total of 20 nations partnering with it.

The James Webb Space Telescope is an infrared telescope that will be able to detect a wide range of light -- including longer wavelengths. It will be more than 100x more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope. It is also going to be settled at the L2 Lagrange point (which helps for orbital stability and lower light pollution from our Sun or reflective light from Earth and the Moon).

One of the primary mission objectives is to search for the initial light that came from the beginning of creation (or, what most scientists would describe as the "Big Bang").

It is scheduled for launch at the end of October. Personally, I hope that scientists observe things using this space telescope that they find baffling or perplexing. I hope that, ultimately, these things will point to the Creator of all things.

It’s hard to imagine something that much more powerful than Hubble.

The photo in the article I posted is stunning but that is just the center of OUR galaxy (and there are at least 125 billion more).

It really does boggle the mind and shows how much the Creator actually did and is still doing.

Only foolish men could use such a telescope and not acknowledge a Creator of all that is.

James Webb telescope successfully launched.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/live-updates/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-12-25-2021/