Milky Way's Turbulent Core in Hi-Res

clipped from hubblesite.org clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com The first infrared panorama of the Milky Way's center revealed a previously unknown population of massive stars scattered across the turbulent zone around our galaxy's core. A composite of Hubble and Spitzer space-telescope observations, the panorama covers a 300-by-115-light-year area with a high enough resolution that—even at a distance of 26,000 light-years from Earth—objects as small as 20 times the size of our solar system are brought to light. Among these object are about 26 million stars, 300 of which can be identified as massive stars that are relatively young—a few million years old or less