{"id":15219,"date":"2018-05-15T08:58:05","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T08:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=15219"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:59:10","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:59:10","slug":"our-galaxys-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/our-galaxys-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Our galaxy\u2019s heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_15220\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15220\" style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15220\" src=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"109\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2-300x47.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15220\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Credit: ESO\/ATLASGAL consortium; ESA\/Planck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">At first glance, this image may resemble red ink filtering through water or a crackling stream of electricity, but it is actually a unique view of our cosmic home. It reveals the central plane of the Milky Way as seen by ESA\u2019s Planck satellite and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), which is located at an altitude of around 5100m in the Chilean Andes and operated by the\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eso.org\/public\/unitedkingdom\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">European Southern Observatory<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">This\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eso.org\/public\/news\/eso1606\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">image was released in 2016<\/a>\u00a0as the final product of an APEX survey mapping the galactic plane visible from the southern hemisphere at submillimetre wavelengths (between infrared and radio on the electromagnetic spectrum). It complements previous data from ESA\u2019s Planck and Herschel space observatories.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">Planck and APEX are an ideal pairing. APEX is best at viewing small patches of sky in great detail while Planck data is ideal for studying areas of sky at the largest scales. It covers the entire sky \u2013 no mean feat. The two work together well, and offer a unique perspective on the sky.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">This image reveals numerous objects within our galaxy. The bright pockets scattered along the Milky Way\u2019s plane in this view are compact sources of submillimetre radiation: very cold, clumpy, dusty regions that may shed light on myriad topics all the way from how individual stars form to how the entire Universe is structured.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">From right to left, notable sources include NGC 6334 (the rightmost bright patch), NGC 6357 (just to the left of NGC 6334), the galactic core itself (the central, most extended, and brightest patch in this image), M8 (the bright lane branching from the plane to the bottom left), and M20 (visible to the upper left of M8). A labelled view can be seen\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eso.org\/public\/news\/eso1606\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000\"><a style=\"color: #000000\" href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Space_Science\/Planck\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Planck<\/a>\u00a0was launched on 14 May 2009 and concluded its mission in October 2013. The telescope returned a wealth of information about the cosmos; its main aim was to study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the relic radiation from the Big Bang. Among other milestones, Planck produced an\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000\" href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Space_Science\/Planck\/Planck_reveals_an_almost_perfect_Universe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">all-sky map of the CMB<\/a>\u00a0at incredible sensitivity and precision, and took the \u2018<a style=\"color: #000000\" href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Space_Science\/Planck\/Planck_takes_magnetic_fingerprint_of_our_Galaxy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">magnetic fingerprint<\/a>\u2019 of the Milky Way by exploring the behaviour of certain light emitted by dust within our galaxy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">Its observations are helping scientists to explore and understand how the Universe formed, its composition and contents, and how it has evolved from its birth to present day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">APEX is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, the Onsala Space Observatory, and the European Southern Observatory, ESO. The telescope is operated by ESO.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At first glance, this image may resemble red ink filtering through water or a crackling stream of electricity, but it is actually a unique view of our cosmic home. It reveals the central plane of the Milky Way as seen by ESA\u2019s Planck satellite and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), which is located at an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,109,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2-150x109.jpg",150,109,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2-300x47.jpg",300,47,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,109,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,109,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,109,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,109,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,109,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,109,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,93,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,93,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,109,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",550,86,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",95,15,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",640,100,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",96,15,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Our_galaxy_s_heart_node_full_image_2.jpg",150,23,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/category\/news\/space-news\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}