A single frame from the ASM animation, showing the expanded galactic center region. The sun is shown as an empty circle and moves across the image throughout the movie. The animation depicts X-ray stars, supernova remnants, active galactic nuclei, and quasars on a map of the entire sky, using the plane of our galaxy as the center line. Most of the X-ray stars and other objects are pinpoints, just like visible stars. But to better illustrate variations in brightness, the animation shows these objects as colored circles.
Larger circles represent brighter objects.
The animation runs about 350,000 times faster than actual time. Four days pass in about one second, and the entire four years passes by in around seven minutes. The rectangular image below the sky image is a magnification of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which has a high density of X-ray stars. Because of the size and length of the animation, we've created two smaller excerpts you here. This clip shows a number of variable x-ray objects near the center of our galaxy.