Radio telescope image reveals Milky Way’s centre in stunning detail

27 Jan 2022 Michael Banks

The image was created from a mosaic of 20 separate observations using over 200 hours of telescope time. (Courtesy: I Heywood, SARAO)

The MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa has taken an image that shows the centre of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail.

Colour in the above image represents bright radio emissions while fainter emissions are shown in greyscale. Running horizontal across the picture is the galactic plane, while the brightest object in the image is the galactic centre, which is home to a supermassive black hole that has a mass four million times that of the Sun.

The image also includes other sources of radio emissions such as supernova remnants, mysterious radio filaments and radio “bubbles” that span 1400 light-years across (seen as a broad vertical feature above).

The image was created from a mosaic of 20 separate observations using over 200 hours of telescope time. Radio waves can penetrate dust that permeates the region and obscures the view at other wavelengths such as optical.

MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope inaugurated in 2018 and consists of 64 antennas spread over a diameter of 8 kilometres in the Northern Cape province of South Africa.

MeerKAT is the most sensitive telescope of its kind and is a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope, which will be built in South Africa and Australia within the coming decade.

More details about the image can be found here.

Michael Banks is news editor of Physics World magazine

from physicsworld.com    111/2/2022