Zooming Into The Center Of The Milky Way [720p]

This zoom sequence stars with a view of the Milky Way. We zoom in towards the crowded central region, in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). By shifting to an infrared view we see through the dusty clouds in this direction and get a close up view of the objects orbiting the supermassive black hole that lies at the center of the Milky Way. The final views show the motion of a newly-discovered gas cloud that is falling rapidly towards the central black hole.

credit: ESO/MPE/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/VISTA/J. Emerson/Digitized Sky Survey 2 Music: xxx

source: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1...

• Category

  Science & Technology

[ac1dchr15t]

Once you realize how big the rest of the Universe is, The Earth can start to make you feel claustrophobic.

[hookah604]

Grats for making into Apod.

[faab007]

If you'd take the Sun as a 10 cm ball, the earth would be 10.7 m away only 0.9 mm big. On average the nearest star would be 2700km away! (about 4 light years) and light would travel at ~2 cm a second :)

[cornmon]

I prefer being on a planet over open space honestly..and I severely doubt humanity will travel out of the Orion spur..let alone the milky way..I'm happy with just finding a suitable planet to run off to when the sun goes to hit..if we even exist when it does..

[FANDS08]

incredible... i wonder how much life is out there.

[CountNachos]

Carl Sagan - Pale blue dot brought me to this video. That sure does put the scale of the cosmos into perspective too.

[UjioSatashi]

i guess i was the only one that noticed but what the hell was that big as a star, alien spaceship moving back and forth between the stars !?

[ultimateownage2]

You could pass straight through the galaxy and never come close to a star. The distance between stars is vast. When Andromeda collides with us, very very few stars will ever actually collide.

[Nikixos]

that's obviously not what happens, of course you find lots of stuff in the way, the telescope uses various kind of rays to see what is behind those planets, google is your friend

[David Terán Vera]

¡demonios, nos cargará el payaso! en millones de años, pero finalmente, el payaso se saldrá con la suya...

[Eric Rusch Sr]

Amazing !