Researchers have created a new map of the central region of the Milky Way that took four years to complete. The mapping revealed previously unseen details and the relationship between the region’s magnetic field and cold dust.
The study was led by researchers at Villanova University and is part of a NASA-funded project. The goal was to better understand the Milky Way and Earth’s place in it. In addition, the research also allows us to understand the way dust and magnetic fields interact in the centers of other galaxies.
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Dust at the center of the Milky Way
The center of the galaxy and interstellar space is full of dust, responsible for the building blocks of galaxies, stars and planets. Understanding the evolution of these objects is essential to understanding the origins of life, but researchers have neglected the interaction of magnetic fields and cosmic dust in these processes for some time, at least until the new mapping.
In the new study, scientists used the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), an Earth-orbiting telescope aboard a Boeing 747 airliner, to observe a region of the Milky Way known as the central molecular zone. The dust in this region is equivalent to 60 million solar masses and has a temperature of minus 258.2° Celsius. At the same time, the area is filled with ionized gas, or plasma.
Radio wave observations in this region contain beautiful vertical features that trace the magnetic fields in the hot, ionized plasma component at the center of the Milky Way. We tried to find out how this has to do with the cold dust component.
David Chuss, head of research, in response to Space.com
The observation resulted in an infrared map covering an area 500 light-years from the center of the Milky Way, built from nine Boeing 747 flights. The new map revealed some never-before-charted areas. The details are also impressive. On the map, the colors represent:
- Pink: hot clouds of cosmic dust;
- Blue: cold clouds of cosmic dust;
- Yellow: fibers emitting radio waves
Magnetic fields and cosmic dust
One goal of the mapping was to reveal how the cold dust aligns with the magnetic field at the heart of the Milky Way, which would also reveal their polarization. These measurements were made based on the way the radiation emitted by the dust aligns with magnetic fields.
This is a journey, not a destination, but we’ve found it to be a very complicated thing. The directions of the magnetic field change in the clouds at the center of the Milky Way. This is the first step in trying to figure out how the field we see in radio waves through these large, organized filaments might relate to the rest of the dynamics at the center of the Milky Way.
David Chuss
Now, scientists hope to continue observing the SOFIA probe for at least two years, potentially revealing what’s going on at the center of the Milky Way.
