I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Astronomy Tuesday


I have posted many gorgeous images through the years, but this one may be my favorite; it looks like an abstract painting I would love to hang on my wall. It's one of a series of images taken by the MeerKAT telescope at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) and shows the center of our Milky Way galaxy, including the giant black hole at the core, in radio emissions.

Radio emissions are just another kind of electomagnetic radiation (EMR), like the visible spectrum, and light like infrared or ultraviolet that our eyes can't see. A lot of astronomical images use the non-visible types of EMR to show us different views of galaxies and nebulae and other objects, but I haven't seen that many radio images. Some of the MeerKAT pictures have been “translated” into color, and look more like the usual images I post, but this one is in grayscale, with color only for the strongest emissions. And it's beautiful.

Credit: I. Heywood, SARAO

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