On crisp Fall evenings like these (at least in the clearer un-light-polluted skies that prevail @ 10,000 feet), my mind turns to. . . that ribbon of stars that spans from horizon to horizon: our Milky Way. And near its center, it is clear that that is where (and how) most stars we now see in our local area. . . form. Because there, due to the distances involved, we may look backward. . . in time, too. Even so, this idea of massive needle structures of unknown composition. . . is simply electrifying!
The infrared emanating from Sag C (see the masthead, and thumbnail of it, below), at our local galactic core, reveals jaw-slacking structural details, most of which was previously only guessed at -- but in the case of "the needles" (hundreds of light years across), these were entirely unknown prior to this moment -- and the next gen space 'scope's resolving power.
From NASA then, this afternoon. . . what a time to be. . . alive:
. . .“There’s never been any infrared data on this region with the level of resolution and sensitivity we get with [this new 'scope], so we are seeing lots of features here for the first time,” said the observation team’s principal investigator Samuel Crowe, an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “[It] reveals an incredible amount of detail, allowing us to study star formation in this sort of environment in a way that wasn’t possible previously.”
“The galactic center is the most extreme environment in our Milky Way galaxy, where current theories of star formation can be put to their most rigorous test,” added professor Jonathan Tan, one of Crowe’s advisors at the University of Virginia. . . .
Around 25,000 light-years from Earth, the galactic center is close enough to study individual stars with the [new] telescope, allowing astronomers to gather unprecedented information on how stars form. . . .
नमस्ते
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