Galactic Center Star Clusters

Explanation: If you had x-ray vision , the central regions of our Galaxy would not be hidden from view by cosmic dust clouds. Instead , the Milky Way toward Sagittarius might look something like this. Pleasing to look at, the gorgeous false-color representation of x-ray data from the Chandra Observatory shows high energies in blue, medium in green, and low energy x-rays in red. The mosaic spans about 130 light-years at the 26,000 light-year distance of the Galactic Center. It reveals massive, x-ray emitting star clusters in a crowded environment. In particular , the Galactic Center cluster and the enormous black hole Sagittarius A* are within the bright region near the bottom. Two other star clusters, the Arches , and the Quintuplet lie near the top. Cluster interactions with dense molecular clouds in the region may produce some of the diffuse emission detected in the Chandra x-ray view.