The largest digital camera ever built for a space mission has been painstakingly mosaicked together from 106 separate electronic detectors. The resulting "billion-pixel array" will serve as the super-sensitive
(PhysOrg.com) -- The center of our Milky Way galaxy is about 27,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius. At the very center of the galaxy lies a black hole whose mass is about four million solar masses. Around it is a donut-shaped structure about eight light-years across that rings the inner volume of neutral gas and an estimated thousands of individual stars. Around that, stretching out to 700 light-years, is a dense molecular zone of activity, unique to the galaxy, with massive star forming clusters of luminous stars, giant molecular clouds, and many more, poorly understood regions as well.
Astronomers have discovered 96 new open star clusters hidden by the dust in the Milky Way. These tiny and faint objects were invisible to previous surveys, but they could not escape the sensitive infrared detectors of the world
(PhysOrg.com) -- Our Milky Way galaxy, like other spiral galaxies, has a disk with sweeping arms of stars, gas, and dust that curve around the galaxy like the arms of a huge pinwheel.
