What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy M83?
Just about everything, from the looks of it.
M83 is one of the closest
spiral galaxies to our own
Milky Way Galaxy and from a distance of 15 million
light-years , appears to be relatively normal.
Zooming in on
M83 's nucleus with the
latest telescopes, however, shows the center
to be an energetic and busy place.
Visible in the above image -- from the newly installed
Wide Field Camera 3
pointing through the
recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope --
are bright
newly formed stars and giant
lanes of dark
dust .
An
image with similar perspective from the
Chandra X-ray Observatory
shows the region is also rich in very hot gas and
small bright sources.
The remnants of about 60
supernova blast s
can be found in the
above image .
