A new visualization allows users to experience 500 years of cosmic evolution around the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, called Sagittarius A * thanks to the combination of data from the Chandra observatory and other telescopes with supercomputer simulations and virtual reality.
The visualization covers approximately 3 light years around Sagittarius A*. Its name is "Galactic Center VR" and you can see it below. It is available for free in stores Steam and Viveport VR.
VR Galactic Center
Each color represents different phenomena, including Wolf-Rayet stars (white), their orbits (gray), and hot gas due to supersonic wind collisions observed by Chandra (blue and cyan). There are also regions where cooler material (red and yellow) overlaps hot gas (purple).
The center of the galaxy is too distant for Chandra to detect individual examples of these collisions, but the overall X-ray brightness of this hot gas is detectable with Chandra's X-ray vision.
Sagittarius A* is a very compact and bright radio source at the center of the Milky Way that is part of a larger structure called Sagittarius A. It is considered to contain a supermassive black hole. This black hole with 1,300 times the solar mass is in a cluster composed of seven stars.
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The news
A VR video allows you to travel through 500 years of cosmic evolution around the supermassive black hole of the Milky Way
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.