All-Wavelengths Galactic Center In celebration of the
International Year of Astronomy 2009, NASA's Great Observatories
-- the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and
the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- have collaborated to produce an
unprecedented image of the central region of our Milky Way
galaxy. In this spectacular image, observations using infrared
light and X-ray light see through the obscuring dust and reveal
the intense activity near the galactic core. Note that the
center of the galaxy is located within the bright white region
to the right of and just below the middle of the image (labeled
Sagitarrius A when you roll your mouse over the above composite
image). The entire image width covers about one-half a degree,
about the same angular width as the full moon. Each telescope's
contribution is presented in a different color: Yellow
represents the near-infrared observations of Hubble. They
outline the energetic regions where stars are being born as well
as reveal hundreds of thousands of