One of the most fascinating aspects of this year’s meeting (for me anyway) is the continued exploration of the center of the Milky Way. I’m interested because right now I’m working on some material for the Griffith Observatory exhibits that tells people about our home galaxy. Of particular interest is the center of the galaxy, where we know there’s a supermassive black hole. But, it also turns out there is a whole lot of other activity happening there, making the core of the Milky Way one of the great “rediscoveries” of current astronomy.

Today (January 10) Spitzer Space Telescope unveiled a beautiful image of the central 900 light-years of the Milky Way, and the view gives us a peek at throngs of old stars, hot young stars, and clouds of gas that are lit by the glow from the nearby stellar youngsters.

The new stars are a bit of a surprise. For a long time, astronomers assumed that no new stars would form at the galactic center because it’s not a place where you would think the clouds of gas that coalesce into stars could “get it together” to make stars. It turns out that these massive young stars probably formed elsewhere and are spiraling into the center of the galaxy, their orbits warped by the gravitational force of the black hole. And, the image also shows newborn stars and the heavy clouds that give birth to stars, all lying more distant from the black hole.

The beauty of the Spitzer image is that it lets us look through the clouds of dust that hide the core of the Milky Way from our optical telescopes. Infrared light just cuts right through the dust, lifting the veil on the action at the heart of the galaxy.

Click on the link above to read more about the center of our galaxy, and view a larger version of the image above. It’s really quite beautiful!