Sounds from around the Milky Way

The center of our Milky Way galaxy is too distant for us to visit in person, but we can still explore it. Telescopes give us a chance to see what the Galactic Center looks like in different types of light.

By translating the inherently digital data (in the form of ones and zeroes) captured by telescopes in space into images, astronomers create visual representations that would otherwise be invisible to us.

But what about experiencing these data with other senses like hearing? Sonification is the process that translates data into sound, and a new project brings the center of the Milky Way to listeners for the first time.

Continued...
Source

Image Credit: Chandra X-Ray Telescope

The center of the Milky Way in X-ray vision.

The Milky Way’s center is 26,000 light-years from Earth, and Sgr A* is measured to be about 14 million miles across. This means that the black hole itself would easily fit inside the orbit of Mercury.

How much mass is crammed inside this relatively small space? The lower mass limit of the black hole itself is calculated to be more than 40,000 Suns.

However, the radio-emitting part of Sgr A* is a bit bigger, about the size of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun (93 million miles), and weighs much, much more – 4 billion Suns.

Source / Image Courtesy

The Hubble image outlines energetic regions where stars are being born, while Spitzer's infrared image shows glowing clouds of dust containing complex structures.

X-rays from Chandra reveal gas heated to millions of degrees from stellar explosions and outflows from Sagittarius A*.

Sagittarius A*