High-flying camera snaps sharpest shots of Milky Way ring
Cornell researchers have captured the sharpest mid-infrared images yet of a ring of gas and dust seven light-years wide orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Thanks to images taken with a Cornell-built camera aboard an airborne observatory, the researchers have found that the material in the Circumnuclear Ring (CNR) is likely heated centrally by a massive cluster of hot, young stars, said Ryan Lau, a graduate student in the field of astronomy at Cornell. Read more
SOFIA Spots Recent Starbursts in the Milky Way Galaxy's Center
Researchers using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) have captured new images of a ring of gas and dust seven light-years in diameter surrounding the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and of a neighbouring cluster of extremely luminous young stars embedded in dust cocoons. The images of our galaxy's circumnuclear ring (CNR) and its neighbouring quintuplet cluster (QC) are the subjects of two posters presented this week during the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Long Beach, Calif. Ryan Lau of Cornell University and his collaborators studied the CNR. Matt Hankins of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway is lead author of the other paper, regarding the QC. Read more