See the most detailed view yet of the center of our galaxy

By Georgina Torbet Published December 16, 2019

Taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this stunning image shows the Milky Way’s central region with an angular resolution of 0.2 arcseconds. This means the level of detail picked up by HAWK-I is roughly equivalent to seeing a football (soccer ball) in Zurich from Munich, where ESO’s headquarters are located. ESO/Nogueras-Lara et al.

This beautiful image is the most detailed observation yet of the center of our galaxy, collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. To see all the spectacular details of the heart of the Milky Way, have a look at the full-size high definition image.

Recommended Videos

The image isn’t only pretty though. It has also taught astronomers more about the history of star formation in our galaxy. The majority of stars in the Milky Way formed when the galaxy was young, between 8 and 13.5 billion years ago. Around 80% of the stars we see in the central region were formed in this time, in a dramatic burst of star creation. Following this, there was a period of around six billion years in which star formation dropped to very low levels. Then another burst of star formation occurred around one billion years ago, including the formation of massive stars with a combined mass of as much of tens of millions of our sun.

This information surprised astronomers, who had not realized the extent to which star formation varied over different periods in the Milky Way’s history. “Our unprecedented survey of a large part of the Galactic center has given us detailed insights into the formation process of stars in this region of the Milky Way,” lead researcher Rainer Schödel from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain, said in a statement. “Contrary to what had been accepted up to now, we found that the formation of stars has not been continuous,” added Francisco Nogueras-Lara, also of the Institute of Astrophysics.

During periods of intense star formation, the galaxy would have looked strikingly different from how it does today. It would be similar to a starburst galaxy, which displays exceptionally high rates of star formation. And as the massive stars form quickly, they also die quickly in epic supernova events. “This burst of activity, which must have resulted in the explosion of more than a hundred thousand supernovae, was probably one of the most energetic events in the whole history of the Milky Way,” Nogueras-Lara said.

The research is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Georgina Torbet

Former Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Topics

Emerging Tech

LG says its AI found a new hair-loss ingredient after searching 420,000 candidates in a day

LG wants AI to do more than chat—it just used one to find a hair-loss ingredient

LG EXAONE Discovery Hair Loss Ingredient Featured

Most AI demos still involve asking a chatbot to summarize an email, generate a picture, or even get medical advice on occasion. LG has a new assignment for the tech, and it's about finding a better cure for hair loss. LG AI Research says its EXAONE Discovery system screened more than 420,000 candidate compounds in a single day and helped identify an ingredient called Rhamsydil in collaboration with LG Household & Health Care.

Developed with LG Household & Health Care, the material is being investigated for hair-loss care and is already being prepared for commercialization. LG says Rhamsydil could help with female-pattern hair loss by creating a scalp environment more conducive to hair growth, with plans to use the ingredient in products from its Dr.Groot scalp-care brand.

Emerging Tech

Scammers are teaching AI to sound like you, and research says our brains are falling for it

Has your accent just become a security vulnerability? AI scammers are getting too good at sounding local

Scammers are turning trusted news brands into investment traps

The next scam call you receive may not sound like a robot, a call center, or even someone pretending to be your relative. AI voice generators have become capable of reproducing regional accents and dialects that sound convincing enough that researchers are warning they could become a potent social-engineering tool.

For example, a scammer could use an accent familiar to a targeted community to make a suspicious call sound considerably more trustworthy.

Emerging Tech

Scientists found a way to turn plastic bottles into cookies you can actually eat

hand holding a cookie

Plastic bottles and cookies rarely show up in the same sentence, but a team of researchers just gave us a reason to talk about both together. According to Science Daily, scientists at Southern Illinois University Carbondale have engineered yeast that can turn waste from plastic bottles and old crop leftovers into real food ingredients and create cookies.

The work began as part of a NASA program exploring how astronauts might produce their own food during deep space missions, since resupply runs from Earth aren't exactly realistic that far out. The researchers' big insight was simple: plastic bottles are packed with carbon, and so, as it turns out, is food. That single connection became the foundation for everything that followed.