Galactic Center Star Clusters
影像提供: D. Wang (UMass) et al., CXC, NASA
Explanation:
If you had x-ray vision, the central regions of our Galaxy would not be hidden from view by cosmic dust clouds. Instead, the Milky Way toward Sagittarius might look something like this. Pleasing to look at, the gorgeous false-color representation of x-ray data from the Chandra Observatory shows high energies in blue, medium in green, and low energy x-rays in red. The mosaic spans about 130 light-years at the 26,000 light-year distance of the Galactic Center. It reveals massive, x-ray emitting star clusters in a crowded environment. In particular, the Galactic Center cluster and the enormous black hole Sagittarius A* are within the bright region near the bottom. Two other star clusters, the Arches, and the Quintuplet lie near the top. Cluster interactions with dense molecular clouds in the region may produce some of the diffuse emission detected in the Chandra x-ray view.
說明:
如果你有X射線視覺，銀河系中心區就不會被宇宙塵埃雲所遮掩住，而往人馬座的銀河看時，可能會看見類似上面這種景觀。這幅賞心悅目的壯麗假色影像，是用錢卓拉天文衛星的X射線數據建構出來的，其中，藍色代表高能量輻射、綠色代表中能量、而低能量者為紅色。以銀河中心的距離26,000光年來計算，這幅組合影像涵蓋了大約130光年的區域。影像呈現了大質量恆星，以及位在擁擠環境裡且會輻射出X射線的星團；其中最特別的是影像下端的亮區，銀河中心星團及超級黑洞人馬座A*都位在這個區域內。此外，二個位在影像頂端的星團--圓拱星團 (the Arches)及五重星團 (Quintuplet)和在這個區域的緻密分子雲交互作用，可能產生了這幅錢卓拉X射線影像的部份瀰漫輝光。
資料來源: Scientific American
Department of Physics, NCKU
