The Galactic Core in Infrared - Astronomy Picture of the Day - 2009 January 7

[Lushin187]

What are the black spots? Are they black holes or just space/dark matter?

[qwecjc]

the darker the region, the less infrared radiation it is emitting. so those black regions are just regions where it is 'empty', empty of matter that emits IR Radiation that is. we use the infrared band of the electromagnetic spectrum to look at the core because IR radiation goes right through a lot of the dust/gas, allowing us to see it more clearly, however as you can see it is still somewhat obscured. dark spots could be nebulae that block IR radiation, emptiness, or a variety of other things