CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A telescope in Chile has revealed in unprecedented detail the swirling splendor of star-forming gases at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.<\/p>\n
The picture released Wednesday by the European Southern Observatory zeroes in on a region of cold cosmic gases more than 650 light-years across. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers).<\/p>\n
The clouds of gas and dust surround the supermassive black hole at the galactic dead center.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the largest image ever taken by the ALMA antenna network in the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth.<\/p>\n
By studying how stars are born in this so-called Central Molecular Zone, astronomers can better understand how galaxies evolved, said survey leader Steve Longmore of Liverpool John Moores University.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a place of extremes, invisible to our eyes, but now revealed in extraordinary detail,\u201d the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Ashley Barnes, who is part of the research team, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Dunn writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A telescope in Chile has revealed in unprecedented detail the swirling splendor of star-forming gases at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1902,31281,2340,159114,9235,159113,2685,61,60,92510,33107,159115,82,159112,16474,159116,159117,11381],"class_list":["post-349548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-beauty","tag-chile","tag-cloud","tag-dry-place","tag-dust","tag-european-southern-observatory-zero","tag-heart","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-light-year","tag-milky-way-galaxy","tag-new-telescope-picture","tag-science","tag-star-forming-gas","tag-supermassive-black-hole","tag-swirling-splendor","tag-unprecedented-detail","tag-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}