91热爆

Space: New images of Milky Way have been captured

milky wayImage source, Natasha Hurley-Walker

Check this out. It's the Milky Way galaxy as you've probably never seen it before.

Astronomers in the western Australian outback have captured this image of the centre of the galaxy in which we live.

The picture from the Murchison Widefield Array telescope shows what our galaxy would look like if human eyes could see radio waves. Awesome right?!

Experts say that studying our galaxy can be a bit like trying to take in the view of an entire forest while standing in the middle of it.

But instead of trees obscuring the view, it's dust and gas.

Image source, Natasha Hurley-Walker
Image caption,

View of the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.

What is the Galactic Centre?

Astrophysicist Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker created the images using the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth, in Australia.

She said "our images are looking directly at the middle of the Milky Way, towards a region astronomers call the Galactic Centre."

It's the point about which the Milky Way galaxy is rotating and is located roughly 24,000 light years from the Solar System in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.

Dr Hurley-Walker and her colleagues discovered remains of the 27 massive stars that exploded into supernovae at the end of their lives.

These giant star explosions which you can see in the images above would have been eight or more times more massive than the sun before their dramatic destruction.

Image source, Natasha Hurley Walker
Image caption,

This image shows the galactic centre using radio waves

Dr Hurley-Walker says there were several 'surprises' found within the data as two of the supernova remains discovered in the image were 'orphans' - which means they were found in a region of sky where there are no massive stars.

She said "this is really exciting for us, because it's hard to find supernova remnants in this phase of life--they allow us to look further back in time in the Milky Way.'