NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) video toont Melkweg centrum ‘like it has never been seen before’
8 January 2020
13:00
SOFIA is an airborne observatory that flies up into the lower regions of the stratosphere, about 40,000 feet above Earth, to capture infrared images of the cosmos. At these heights, the flying telescope can bypass a portion of Earth’s atmosphere that blocks a significant amount of infrared light.
From July 1 to July 11 of 2019, researchers led by Matt Hankins, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech, took SOFIA on several flights to capture new infrared views of the brightest portions of the center of our galaxy. Previous infrared telescopes were unable able to capture these regions because the intense brightness led to overexposed images. Unlike those telescopes, SOFIA can take short exposures, reducing the chances of oversaturation.
Via Caltech; NASA’s Ames Research Center youtube upload >
NASA’s flying telescope SOFIA captured a crisp infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Spanning more than 600 light-years, the panorama reveals details within the dense swirls of gas and dust, opening the door to future research into how massive stars are forming and what’s feeding the black hole at our galaxy’s core.
