Chandra Release - January 5, 2010

Visual Description: Sagittarius A*

The image is a Chandra image of supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* in the center of the Milky Way galaxy.  The image features brick red and royal blue colors with bits of purple and blue-green, as well as small white dots dispersed throughout the image.  Visually, at the center of the image, there is a bright, lumpy object showing the intense X-ray radiation emanating from the Sgr A* black hole. In the surrounding area, there are a couple smaller, greenish-blue lumps layered throughout the image, feathering out to a large almost butterfly shape filling much of the screen. The image appears textured, like dozens of glow worms are paused in their wriggling.  This Chandra image was made from the longest X-ray exposure of that region at the time of observation.  Such a deep observation has given scientists an unprecedented view of the supernova remnant near Sgr A* - known as Sgr A East - and the lobes of hot gas extending for a dozen light years on either side of the black hole. These lobes provide evidence for powerful eruptions occurring several times over the last ten thousand years. The image also contains several mysterious X-ray filaments, some of which may be huge magnetic structures interacting with streams of energetic electrons produced by rapidly spinning neutron stars. Such features are known as pulsar wind nebulas.