Journey to the Center of the Galaxy
What wonders lie at the center of our Galaxy?
In Jules Verne's
science fiction classic
A Journey
to the Center of the Earth, Professor Liedenbrock
and his fellow explorers encounter many strange and exciting wonders.
Astronomers already know of some of the
bizarre objects that exist at our
Galactic center, including
like vast cosmic dust clouds,
bright star clusters,
swirling rings of gas, and even a
supermassive black hole.
Much of the Galactic Center is shielded from our view in visible light
by the intervening dust and gas, but it can be explored using
other forms of
electromagnetic radiation.
The
above video is actually a digital zoom into the
Milky Way's center which starts by utilizing visible light images from the
Digitized Sky Survey.
As the movie proceeds, the light shown shifts to dust-penetrating infrared and highlights gas clouds that were
recently discovered to be falling toward central black hole.