Milky Way

Astrophotography

This picture of the Milky Way was taken at Jordan Pond in Acadia national park. The image shows the central bulge and brightest part of the Milky Way, which lies in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. This region is known as the Galactic Center, and it's the densest and most star-filled part of our galaxy. The bright central area near the horizon is the Galactic Core, where the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* resides. The core is about 26000 light years away from earth. This black hole is about 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun. It acts as the gravitational anchor for the entire galaxy, governing the orbits of stars and gas clouds in the central region. Its disk is vast, measuring roughly 100,000 to 180,000 light-years in diameter, but it's remarkably thin, only about 1,000 light-years thick. Our Sun and solar system are orbiting the galactic center at about 500,000 miles per hour, but due to the sheer size of the galaxy, it takes approximately 250 million years to complete a single revolution.