Chandra Image of Galactic Ridge (IMAGE)

Chandra X-ray Center

Chandra Image of Galactic Ridge

Caption

This extremely deep Chandra X-ray Observatory image has resolved a long-standing mystery about an X-ray glow along the plane of the Milky Way. The Chandra results show that the X-ray emission in the region is caused by hundreds of point-like sources, implying that the glow along the plane of the Galaxy is due to millions of such sources. In this image, the Chandra field-of-view, a region located only about 1.4 degrees from the Galactic Center, is pulled out from an infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Credit

X-ray: NASA/CXC/TUM/M.Revnivtsev et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE Team

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