Superheated gas and magnetic fields form an energetic tapestry in this panoramic view of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. This image, about 1,000 light-years wide and 2,000 light-years long, tells us more about the galactic space weather shaped by dynamic events such as supernova explosions and eruptions of matter around our galaxy's supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*.

Image Description:

This vertical panoramic image shows a region near the centre of the Milky Way, extending up to 1000 light years above and below the galaxy. The image looks like clouds of coloured gas streaked with thin threads, dotted with bright white shapes. Small orange and purple dots are seen on a black background. It was created using a large mosaic of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. The image is presented both unlabelled and labelled in the two images in this article.

At the centre of the image is a horizontal, bright purple cloud with a glowing white core. This is the plane of the Milky Way and the disc where most of the Galaxy's stars are located. The labelled image shows that the glowing white core contains several star clusters, clouds of gas and dust, and the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. There are also grey streaks inside this translucent cloud, resembling fine feathers. These streaks are rendered in faint greys and purples and appear blurred, like fast-moving streaks of light captured in a photograph. These are threads of superheated gas and magnetic fields near the centre of the Galaxy.

Below the plane of the Milky Way, to our lower left, is a bright, brick-orange cloud. Above the plane, to our upper right, is a thin lilac cloud with some orange haze to the left. The orange cloud and fog are large clouds of hot gas. The colours represent the different X-ray energies observed by Chandra.

Bright white shapes, even brighter than the Milky Way's glowing white core, are located throughout the image. Two are to the right of the nucleus and two are below the plane of the galaxy. These are X-rays reflected from the dust around the bright X-ray sources.