The Centre of the Milky Way

Image Credit: Mike Read (mar@roe.ac.uk) and the UKIDSS consortium.
Copywright: Public Domain, courtesy of the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope 
(UKIRT)

Explanation: The central square degree of our Milky Way Galaxy appears
as a richly coloured carpet of stars and dark interstellar clouds. This
near infrared image from the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey contains 
~1 million stars and several massive star clusters. The bright region at the 
centre is the Galactic Centre cluster, a strange cluster in which stars of 
all ages are bound by the gravity of the supermassive black hole at the centre 
of the Milky Way. Most of the stars in this image are obscured from view in 
visible light by dark clouds of dust and gas but near infrared light 
penetrates these clouds quite well, allowing us to see through to the centre 
of the Milky Way and beyond. The massive star clusters known as the 
Quintuplet and the Arches also appear in the image (almost halfway from the 
centre to the left side) but they are almost indistiguishable from bright 
stars on this scale. See http://surveys.roe.ac.uk:8080/wsa/gps_mosaic.jsp for 
an interactive view of the Milky Way.