Galactic Center - wikipedia Galactic Center This article is about the Milky Way 's center. For galaxy centers in general, see Bulge ( astronomy ) and Central massive object. For the book saga, see Galactic Center Saga. The Galactic Center, as seen by one of the 2MASS infrared telescopes, is located in the bright upper left portion of the image. The Galactic Center is the rotational center of the Milky Way. The estimates for its location range from 24 -- 28.4 kilolight - years ( 7.4 -- 8.7 kiloparsecs ) from Earth in the direction of the constellations Sagittarius, Ophiuchus, and Scorpius where the Milky Way appears brightest. It coincides with the compact radio source Sagittarius A *. There are around 10 million stars within one parsec of the Galactic Center, dominated by red giants. There is also a significant population of massive supergiants and Wolf - Rayet stars from a star formation event around one million years ago. There is a supermassive black hole at the centre, which powers the Sagittarius A * radio source Contents 1 Discovery 2 Distance to the Galactic Center 3 Supermassive black hole 4 Stellar population 4.1 Gallery 5 See also 6 Notes and references 7 Further reading 8 External links Discovery Play media This pan video gives a closer look at a huge image of the central parts of the Milky Way made by combining thousands of images from ESO 's VISTA telescope on Paranal in Chile and compares it with the view in visible light. Because VISTA has a camera sensitive to infrared light it can see through much of the dust blocking the view in visible light, although many more opaque dust filaments still show up well in this picture. Because of interstellar dust along the line of sight, the Galactic Center can not be studied at visible, ultraviolet or soft ( low - energy ) X-ray wavelengths. The available information about the Galactic Center comes from observations at gamma ray, hard ( high - energy ) X-ray, infrared, sub-millimetre and radio wavelengths. Immanuel Kant stated in General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens ( 1755 ) that a large star was at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, and that Sirius might be the star. Harlow Shapley stated in 1918 that the halo of globular clusters surrounding the Milky Way seemed to be centered on the star swarms in the constellation of Sagittarius, but the dark molecular clouds in the area blocked the view for optical astronomers. In the early 1940s Walter Baade at Mount Wilson Observatory took advantage of wartime blackout conditions in nearby Los Angeles to conduct a search for the center with the 100 inch Hooker Telescope. He found that near the star Alnasl ( Gamma Sagittarii ) there is a one - degree - wide void in the interstellar dust lanes, which provides a relatively clear view of the swarms of stars around the nucleus of our Milky Way Galaxy. This gap has been known as Baade 's Window ever since. At Dover Heights in Sydney, Australia a team of radio astronomers from the Division of Radiophysics at the CSIRO, led by Joseph Lade Pawsey, used ' sea interferometry ' to discover some of the first interstellar and intergalactic radio sources, including Taurus A, Virgo A and Centaurus A. By 1954 they had built an 80 feet ( 24.4 meters ) fixed dish antenna and used it to make a detailed study of an extended, extremely powerful belt of radio emission that was detected in Sagittarius. They named an intense point - source near the center of this belt Sagittarius A, and realised that it was located at the very center of our Galaxy, despite being some 32 degrees south - west of the conjectured galactic center of the time. In 1958 the International Astronomical Union ( IAU ) decided to adopt the position of Sagittarius A as the true zero co-ordinate point for the system of galactic latitude and longitude. In the equatorial coordinate system the location is : RA 17 45 40.04, Dec − 29 ° 00 ′ 28.1 '' ( J2000 epoch ). Distance to the Galactic Center Play media Animation of a barred galaxy like the Milky Way showing the presence of an X-shaped bulge. The X-shape extends to about one half of the bar radius. It is directly visible when the bar is seen from the side, but when the viewer is close to the long axis of the bar it can not be seen directly and its presence can only be inferred from the distribution of brightnesses of stars along a given direction. The exact distance between the Solar System and the Galactic Center is not certain, although estimates since 2000 have remained within the range 24 -- 28.4 kilolight - years ( 7.4 -- 8.7 kiloparsecs ). The latest estimates from geometric - based methods and standard candles yield the following distances to the Galactic Center : 7000740000000000000 ♠ 7.4 ± 0.2 ( stat ) ± 0.2 ( syst ) or 7020228340141028572 ♠ 7.4 ± 0.3 kpc ( 7020227057531341939 ♠ ≈ 24 ± 1 kly ) 7020235128631707800 ♠ 7.62 ± 0.32 kpc ( 7020234626115720003 ♠ ≈ 24.8 ± 1 kly ) 7020237597173772973 ♠ 7.7 ± 0.7 kpc ( 7020237464334861778 ♠ ≈ 25.1 ± 2.3 kly ) 7.94 or 7020246854206517375 ♠ 8.0 ± 0.5 kpc ( 7020245978992287100 ♠ ≈ 26 ± 1.6 kly ) 7000798000000000000 ♠ 7.98 ± 0.15 ( stat ) ± 0.20 ( syst ) or 7020246854206517375 ♠ 8.0 ± 0.25 kpc ( 7020245978992287100 ♠ ≈ 26 ± 0.8 kly ) 7020257036942536217 ♠ 8.33 ± 0.35 kpc ( 7020255439722759681 ♠ ≈ 27 ± 1.1 kly ) 7020268453949587645 ♠ 8.7 ± 0.5 kpc ( 7020268684745421294 ♠ ≈ 28.4 ± 1.6 kly ) An accurate determination of the distance to the Galactic Center as established from variable stars ( e.g. RR Lyrae variables ) or standard candles ( e.g. red - clump stars ) is hindered by countless effects, which include : an ambiguous reddening law ; a bias for smaller values of the distance to the Galactic Center because of a preferential sampling of stars toward the near side of the Galactic bulge owing to interstellar extinction ; and an uncertainty in characterizing how a mean distance to a group of variable stars found in the direction of the Galactic bulge relates to the distance to the Galactic Center. The nature of the Milky Way 's bar, which extends across the Galactic Center, is also actively debated, with estimates for its half - length and orientation spanning between 1 -- 5 kpc ( short or a long bar ) and 10 -- 50 °. Certain authors advocate that the Milky Way features two distinct bars, one nestled within the other. The bar is delineated by red - clump stars ( see also red giant ) ; however, RR Lyr variables do not trace a prominent Galactic bar. The bar may be surrounded by a ring called the `` 5 - kpc ring '' that contains a large fraction of the molecular hydrogen present in the Milky Way, as well as most of the Milky Way 's star formation activity. Viewed from the Andromeda Galaxy, it would be the brightest feature of the Milky Way. Supermassive black hole There is a supermassive black hole in the bright white area to the right of the center of the image. This composite photograph covers about half of a degree. The complex astronomical radio source Sagittarius A appears to be located almost exactly at the Galactic Center ( approx. 18 hrs, − 29 deg ), and contains an intense compact radio source, Sagittarius A *, which coincides with a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Accretion of gas onto the black hole, probably involving a disk around it, would release energy to power the radio source, itself much larger than the black hole. The latter is too small to see with present instruments. Artist impression of a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy A study in 2008 which linked radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona and California ( Very Long Baseline Interferometry ) measured the diameter of Sagittarius A * to be 44 million kilometers ( 0.3 AU ). For comparison, the radius of Earth 's orbit around the Sun is about 150 million kilometers ( 1.0 AU ), whereas the distance of Mercury from the Sun at closest approach ( perihelion ) is 46 million kilometers ( 0.3 AU ). Thus the diameter of the radio source is slightly less than the distance from Mercury to the Sun. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany using Chilean telescopes have confirmed the existence of a supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center, on the order of 4.3 million solar masses. On 5 January 2015, NASA reported observing an X-ray flare 400 times brighter than usual, a record - breaker, from Sagittarius A *. The unusual event may have been caused by the breaking apart of an asteroid falling into the black hole or by the entanglement of magnetic field lines within gas flowing into Sagittarius A *, according to astronomers. Stellar Population Galactic Center of the Milky Way and a meteor The central cubic parsec around Sagittarius A * contains around 10 million stars. Although most of them are old red giant stars, the Galactic Center is also rich in massive stars. More than 100 OB and Wolf -- Rayet stars have been identified there so far. They seem to have all been formed in a single star formation event a few million years ago. The existence of these relatively young stars was a surprise to experts, who expected the tidal forces from the central black hole to prevent their formation. This paradox of youth is even stronger for stars that are on very tight orbits around Sagittarius A *, such as S2 and S0 - 102. The scenarios invoked to explain this formation involve either star formation in a massive star cluster offset from the Galactic Center that would have migrated to its current location once formed, or star formation within a massive, compact gas accretion disk around the central black - hole. Most of these 100 young, massive stars seem to be concentrated within one or two disks, rather than randomly distributed within the central parsec. This observation however does not allow definite conclusions to be drawn at this point. Star formation does not seem to be occurring currently at the Galactic Center, although the Circumnuclear Disk of molecular gas that orbits the Galactic Center at two parsecs seems a fairly favorable site for star formation. Work presented in 2002 by Antony Stark and Chris Martin mapping the gas density in a 400 - light - year region around the Galactic Center has revealed an accumulating ring with a mass several million times that of the Sun and near the critical density for star formation. They predict that in approximately 200 million years there will be an episode of starburst in the Galactic Center, with many stars forming rapidly and undergoing supernovae at a hundred times the current rate. This starburst may also be accompanied by the formation of galactic jets as matter falls into the central black hole. It is thought that the Milky Way undergoes a starburst of this sort every 500 million years. In addition to the paradox of youth, there is also a `` conundrum of old age '' associated with the distribution of the old stars at the Galactic Center. Theoretical models had predicted that the old stars -- which far outnumber young stars -- should have a steeply - rising density near the black hole, a so - called Bahcall -- Wolf cusp. Instead, it was discovered in 2009 that the density of the old stars peaks at a distance of roughly 0.5 parsec from Sgr A *, then falls inward : instead of a dense cluster, there is a `` hole '', or core, around the black hole. Several suggestions have been put forward to explain this puzzling observation, but none is completely satisfactory. For instance, although the black hole would eat stars near it, creating a region of low density, this region would be much smaller than a parsec. Because the observed stars are a fraction of the total number, it is theoretically possible that the overall stellar distribution is different than what is observed, although no plausible models of this sort have yet been proposed. Gallery Red giant stars coexist with white, Sun - like stars. White Dwarfs in Milky Way 's Central Hub The center of the Milky Way - image taken by ISAAC, the VLT 's near - and mid-infrared spectrometer and camera Infrared image from Spitzer Space Telescope A view of the night sky near Sagittarius, enhanced to show better contrast and detail in the dust lanes. The principal stars in Sagittarius are indicated in red. The central parts of the Milky Way, as observed in the near - infrared with the NACO instrument on ESO 's Very Large Telescope Infra - red image of the center of the Milky Way revealing a new population of massive stars Detection of an unusually bright X-Ray flare from Sagittarius A *, a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy See also Space portal Cosmic noise Galactic anticenter Galactic coordinate system Great Rift Sagittarius A Sagittarius A * Sagittarius B2 Supermassive black hole SDSS J090745. 0 + 024507 Notes and references Jump up ^ Ley, Willy ( August 1965 ). `` The Galactic Giants ''. For Your Information. Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 130 -- 142. Jump up ^ Shapley, H ( 1918 ). `` Studies based on the colors and magnitudes in stellar clusters. VII. The distances, distribution in space, and dimensions of 69 globular clusters ''. Astrophysical Journal. 48 : 154. Bibcode : 1918ApJ... 48... 154S. doi : 10.1086 / 142423. 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( January 1998 ). `` The RR Lyrae Population of the Galactic Bulge from the MACHO Database : Mean Colors and Magnitudes ''. Astrophysical Journal. 492 ( 1 ) : 190 -- 199. Bibcode : 1998ApJ... 492... 190A. doi : 10.1086 / 305017. Jump up ^ Kunder, Andrea ; Chaboyer, Brian ( December 2008 ). `` Metallicity Analysis of MACHO Galactic Bulge RR0 Lyrae Stars from their Light Curves ''. The Astronomical Journal. 136 ( 6 ) : 2441 -- 2452. arXiv : 0809.1645. Bibcode : 2008AJ... 136.2441 K. doi : 10.1088 / 0004 - 6256 / 136 / 6 / 2441. Jump up ^ Staff ( September 12, 2005 ). `` Introduction : Galactic Ring Survey ''. Boston University. Retrieved 2007 - 05 - 10. Jump up ^ `` ALMA Reveals Intense Magnetic Field Close to Supermassive Black Hole ''. ESO Press Release. European Southern Observatory. Retrieved 21 April 2015. Jump up ^ Doeleman, Sheperd S. ; et al. ( 2008 ). `` Event - horizon - scale structure in the supermassive black hole candidate at that Galactic Centre ''. Nature. 455 ( 7209 ) : 78 -- 80. arXiv : 0809.2442. Bibcode : 2008Natur. 455... 78D. doi : 10.1038 / nature07245. PMID 18769434. Jump up ^ Reynolds, Christopher S. ( 2008 ). `` Bringing black holes into focus ''. Nature. 455 ( 7209 ) : 39 -- 40. Bibcode : 2008Natur. 455... 39R. doi : 10.1038 / 455039a. PMID 18769426. ^ Jump up to : Chou, Felicia ; Anderson, Janet ; Watzke, Megan ( 5 January 2015 ). `` RELEASE 15 - 001 - NASA 's Chandra Detects Record - Breaking Outburst from Milky Way 's Black Hole ''. NASA. Retrieved 6 January 2015. Jump up ^ http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~ryden/ast162_7/notes31.html Jump up ^ Mauerhan, J.C. ; Cotera, A. ; Dong, H. ( 2010 ). `` Isolated Wolf - Rayet Stars and O Supergiants in the Galactic Center Region Identified Via Paschen - α Excess ''. The Astrophysical Journal. 725 : 188 -- 199. arXiv : 1009.2769. Bibcode : 2010ApJ... 725... 188M. doi : 10.1088 / 0004 - 637X / 725 / 1 / 188. Jump up ^ http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~ghezgroup/gc/ Jump up ^ http://www.mpe.mpg.de/ir/GC/ Jump up ^ Buchholz, R.M. ; Schödel, R. ; Eckart, A. ( May 2009 ). `` Composition of the galactic center star cluster : Population analysis from adaptive optics narrow band spectral energy distributions ''. Astronomy and Astrophysics. 499 ( 2 ) : 483 -- 501. arXiv : 0903.2135. Bibcode : 2009A&A... 499... 483B. doi : 10.1051 / 0004 - 6361 / 200811497. Jump up ^ Merritt, David ( May 2011 ). `` Dynamical Models of the Galactic Center ''. In Morris, Mark ; Wang, Daniel Q. ; Yuan, Feng. Dynamical Models of the Galactic Center. The Galactic Center : A Window on the Nuclear Environment of Disk Galaxies. San Francisco : Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Jump up ^ Chown, Marcus ( Sep 2010 ). `` Something 's been eating the stars ''. New Scientist. 207 ( 2778 ) : 30 -- 33. Bibcode : 2010NewSc. 207... 30M. doi : 10.1016 / S0262 - 4079 ( 10 ) 62278 - 6. Jump up ^ `` Hubble captures glittering crowded hub of our Milky Way ''. www.spacetelescope.org. Retrieved 15 January 2018. Jump up ^ `` Hubble Spots White Dwarfs in Milky Way 's Central Hub ''. Retrieved 9 November 2015. Further reading Eckart, A. ; Schödel, R. ; Straubmeier, C. ( 2005 ). The Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way. London : Imperial College Press. ISBN 1 - 86094 - 567 - 8. Melia, Fulvio ( 2003 ). The Black Hole in the Center of Our Galaxy. Princeton : Princeton University Press. ISBN 0 - 691 - 09505 - 1. Melia, Fulvio ( 2007 ). The Galactic Supermassive Black Hole. Princeton : Princeton University Press. ISBN 978 - 0 - 691 - 13129 - 0. External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Galactic Center. UCLA Galactic Center Group Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics Galactic Center Group The Galactic Supermassive Black Hole The Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way The dark heart of the Milky Way Animation showing orbits of stars near the center of the Milky Way galaxy Zooming in on the centre of the Milky Way Dramatic Increase in Supernova Explosions Looms APOD : Journey to the Center of the Galaxy A Galactic Cloud of Antimatter Fast Stars Near the Galactic Center At the Center of the Milky Way Galactic Centre Starscape Annotated Galactic Center A simulation of the stars orbiting the Milky Way 's central massive black hole Galactic Center on arxiv.org Milky Way : Distance to the Galactic Centre Milky Way : a Distance to the Galactic Center - 2 Milky Way : a Distance to the Galactic Center - 3 The Milky Way Location Milky Way → Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Observable universe → Universe Each arrow ( → ) may be read as `` within '' or `` part of ''. Galactic core Center of the Milky Way Sagittarius A Sagittarius A * Supermassive black hole Spiral arms Carina -- Sagittarius Norma -- Cygnus Orion -- Cygnus Perseus Scutum -- Centaurus Satellite galaxies Magellanic Clouds Large Magellanic Cloud Small Magellanic Cloud Magellanic Stream Magellanic Bridge Sagittarius Spheroidal Sagittarius Stream Boötes II Coma Berenices Messier 54 Palomar 12 Segue 1 Segue 2 Terzan 7 Dwarfs Boötes I Boötes III Canes Venatici I Canes Venatici II Canis Major Carina Crater 2 Draco Fornax Hercules Leo I Leo II Leo IV Leo V Leo T Phoenix Pisces I Pisces II Sculptor Sextans Triangulum II Ursa Major I Ursa Major II Ursa Minor Virgo I Other Monoceros Ring Virgo Stream Koposov I Koposov II Segue 3 Willman 1 Related Andromeda -- Milky Way collision Astronomy portal Coordinates : 17 45 40.04, − 29 ° 00 ′ 28.1 '' Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Galactic_Center&oldid=827470495 '' Categories : Milky Way Geometric centers Hidden categories : CS1 Russian - language sources ( ru ) Articles with inconsistent citation formats Wikipedia articles needing clarification from February 2018 Pages using div col without cols and colwidth parameters Pages using Columns - list with deprecated parameters Articles containing video clips Talk Contents About Wikipedia বাংলা Беларуская Català Čeština Deutsch Ελληνικά Español فارسی Français 한국어 हिन्दी Hrvatski Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Basa Jawa Lëtzebuergesch Lietuvių Bahasa Melayu မြန်မာဘာသာ Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Polski Português Română Русский Slovenčina Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Türkçe Українська 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 24 February 2018, at 22 : 27. 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Question: what is proposed to be at the center of our galaxy
Answer: a supermassive black hole