NASA/CXC/UMass/Q.D. Wang

A spectacular new image has been released by NASA showing the ‘downtown’ of the spiral galaxy we live in.

The photography is a composite made up of 370 observations that were taken at the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory over the past couple of decades. It shows billions of stars and a seemingly endless number of black holes 26,000 light years from Earth, at the center of the Milky Way.

Much of the work that went into making this image was undertaken by Daniel Wang. An  astronomer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he spent his pandemic year working on the photo you can see above.

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“What we see in the picture is a violent or energetic ecosystem in our galaxy’s downtown,” Wang said to Associated Press. “There are a lot of supernova remnants, black holes, and neutron stars there. Each X-ray dot or feature represents an energetic source, most of which are in the center.”

Well, we can’t deny that what Wang got up to over the last year sure beats our Netflix bingeing. We’re grateful for his work.

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