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February 26, 2026<\/p>\n
2 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Chemistry at the heart of the Milky Way has never looked so gorgeous<\/p>\n Astronomers captured this stunning image of the Milky Way\u2019s center, revealing a web of gas, dust and stars in extraordinary detail<\/p>\n By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner<\/span><\/p>\n ALMA(ESO\/NAOJ\/NRAO)\/S. Longmore et al. Stars in inset: ESO\/D. Minniti et al. Milky Way: ESO\/S. Guisard<\/p>\n In the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, there is beauty in chaos. There dense clouds of dust and spindly filaments of cold molecular gas, the basic matter from which stars form, encircle the galaxy\u2019s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. And now a new image reveals that beauty in unprecedented detail.<\/p>\n Taken using the Atacama Large Millimeter\/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the image displays our galaxy as a \u201cplace of extremes, invisible to our eyes, but now revealed in extraordinary detail,\u201d said Ashley Barnes, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Germany, in a statement.<\/p>\n ALMA(ESO\/NAOJ\/NRAO)\/S. Longmore et al. Background: ESO\/D. Minniti et al.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n The image captures an area more than 650 light-years across in what is known as the central molecular zone (CMZ). Inside lurk gas structures that span many dozens of light-years and the smaller clouds that envelope stars. Astronomers are particularly interested in the zone\u2019s chemistry because its gas feeds into the matter from which stars grow.<\/p>\n Studying this region of the Milky Way can offer clues as to how galaxies like our own formed, said Steve Longmore, an astrophysicist at Liverpool John Moores University in England, in the same statement. \u201cWe believe the region shares many features with galaxies in the early Universe, where stars were forming in chaotic, extreme environments,\u201d added Longmore, who is also part of the team that captured the new observations.<\/p>\n The image, which is the largest ever captured by ALMA, is part of the ALMA CMZ Exploration Survey. The new data were described in several papers that were posted on the preprint server arXiv.org and accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 26, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Chemistry at the heart of the Milky Way has never looked so gorgeous Astronomers captured this stunning image of the Milky Way\u2019s center, revealing a web of gas, dust and stars in extraordinary detail By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner ALMA(ESO\/NAOJ\/NRAO)\/S. Longmore et<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[18763,1879,3411,8215,11667],"class_list":{"0":"post-45427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-complexity","9":"tag-galaxy","10":"tag-heart","11":"tag-image","12":"tag-milky"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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