Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik
Deutsche Version MPE HEG X-Ray Astronomy Wave ROSAT Gallery ROSAT Calendar Images 1994
Tomography of the Centre of the Milky Way in Soft X-Rays
The subdivision of a ROSAT exposure into different energy ranges allows a kind of tomography of the Milky Way. The uniform diffuse emission, which comes from the vicinity (a few tens of light years) of our Sun, can be seen in the lowest energy range between 0.1 and 0.5 keV. Only a few nearby stars are seen. Above 0.5 keV this veil becomes transparent, and absorption structures come into view. They correspond to the optical dark clouds that split the band of the Milky Way (BII=0) in the middle (top right, bottom left). The distance of these dark clouds is about 500 light years. At energies above 1.5 keV (bottom right) the dark clouds are transparent and allow a view of the centre of the Milky Way 30,000 light years away. Some bright sources reside in its vicinity; but the centre of the Milky Way apparently does not contain any luminous, intense X-ray source.
gzipped 300 dpi tif version
ROSAT (Röntgensatellit) 1994
Images from the X-ray sky with the ROSAT telescope · All rights reserved:
© Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Postfach 1603, 85740 Garching, Germany.
The X-ray images are produced by the SASS/EXSAS software MPE, ESO-MIDAS.
The ROSAT project is managed by the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany on behalf of the Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie (BMBF).
© X-Ray Group at MPE (group)
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