A dramatic new vista of the center of the Milky Way galaxy from
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory exposes new levels of the
complexity and intrigue in the Galactic center. The mosaic of 88
Chandra pointings represents a freeze-frame of the spectacle of
stellar evolution, from bright young stars to black holes, in a
crowded, hostile environment dominated by a central,
supermassive black hole. Permeating the region is a diffuse haze
of X-ray light from gas that has been heated to millions of
degrees by winds from massive young stars — which appear to form
more frequently here than elsewhere in the Galaxy — explosions
of dying stars, and outflows powered by the supermassive black
hole — known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Data from Chandra and
other X-ray telescopes suggest that giant X-ray flares from this
black hole occurred about 50 and about 300 years earlier. The
area around Sgr A* also contains several mysterious X-ray
filaments. Some of these likely represent huge magnetic
structures interacting with streams