{"id":10954,"date":"2022-02-19T17:04:14","date_gmt":"2022-02-19T22:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=10954"},"modified":"2022-02-19T17:09:28","modified_gmt":"2022-02-19T22:09:28","slug":"our-galactic-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=10954","title":{"rendered":"Our galactic center"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 64-antenna radio telescope complex, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/MeerKAT\">MeerKAT<\/a>, is South Africa&#8217;s contribution to the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Square_Kilometre_Array\">Square Kilometer Array<\/a>, an international project under development to create an unprecedented radio astronomy facility.<\/p>\n<p>While the SKA project is still in its infancy, MeerKAT is fully functional, and it just delivered the most detailed, <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2201.10541\">most astonishing images<\/a> yet of the central region of our own Milky Way. Here is, for instance, an image of the Sagittarius A region that also hosts the Milky Way&#8217;s supermassive black hole, Sgr A*:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2201.10541\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10955\" src=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"840\" height=\"832\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A.png 840w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A-300x297.png 300w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A-768x761.png 768w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A-96x96.png 96w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A-24x24.png 24w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A-36x36.png 36w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A-48x48.png 48w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/MeerKAT-SGR-A-64x64.png 64w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The filamentary structure that is seen in this image is apparently <a href=\"https:\/\/bigthink.com\/starts-with-a-bang\/milky-way-center\/\">poorly understood<\/a>. As for the scale of this image, notice that it is marked in arc seconds; at the estimated distance to Sgr A, one arc second translates into roughly 1\/8th of a light year, so the image presented here is roughly a 15 by 15 light year area.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=10954' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 64-antenna radio telescope complex, MeerKAT, is South Africa&#8217;s contribution to the Square Kilometer Array, an international project under development to create an unprecedented radio astronomy facility. While the SKA project is still in its infancy, MeerKAT is fully functional, and it just delivered the most detailed, most astonishing images yet of the central region <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=10954' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-physics","category-20-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10954"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10958,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10954\/revisions\/10958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}