On 7/1/21, “Chandra Turns Up the Heat in the Milky Way Center” was featured as the NASA Image of the Day. The image, made by combining a dozen Chandra observations, and was first studied in 2004. A long look by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed new evidence that extremely hot gas exists in a large region at the center of the Milky Way. The intensity and spectrum of the high-energy X-rays produced by this gas present a puzzle as to how it is being heated. The discovery came to light as a team of astronomers, led by Michael Muno of UCLA used Chandra's unique resolving power to study a region about 100 light years across and painstakingly remove the contributions from 2,357 point-like X-ray sources due to neutron stars, black holes, white dwarfs, foreground stars, and background galaxies. What remained was an irregular, diffuse glow from a 10-million-degree Celsius gas cloud, embedded in a glow of higher-energy X-rays with a spectrum characteristic of 100-million-degree gas.
For more information visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/chandra-turns-up-the-heat-in-the-milky-way-center.
