Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Telescope have discovered an "exhaust vent attached to a “chimney” of hot gas blowing away from the center of the Milky Way galaxy," according to the Chandra team.
Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart
Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart
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00:00Music
00:03Visit Chandra's Beautiful Universe.
00:06Galactic Center Exhaust Vent
00:10Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory,
00:13astronomers have located an exhaust vent attached to a chimney of hot gas
00:18blowing away from the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
00:22The chimney and vent are about 26,000 light-years from Earth.
00:27The chimney begins at the center of the galaxy
00:30and stands perpendicular to the Milky Way's spiral disk.
00:34The research team thinks that eruptions from the supermassive black hole
00:38at the Milky Way's center,
00:41called Sagittarius A-star, or Sag A-star for short,
00:45may have created this chimney and exhaust vent.
00:49Previously, other astronomers had found a structure in X-ray data
00:53from Chandra and XMM-Newton that seemed to be acting as a chimney,
00:58moving hot gas away from the center of the galaxy.
01:02This latest result shows this hot gas escaping into the rest of the galaxy.
01:07The new Chandra data reveals what astronomers think are the walls
01:11of a cylindrical tunnel that is pumping hot gas into the Milky Way,
01:15about 700 light-years away from Sag A-star.
01:19The researchers think this hot gas is being driven upwards
01:22when material gets dumped onto Sag A-star and causes eruptions.
01:26It's too early to tell just how often Sag A-star is being fed.
01:30Is this energy and heat stoked by a large amount of material
01:34being dumped onto Sag A-star at once,
01:36like a bunch of logs being dumped on a fire at once?
01:39Or does it come from multiple small loads being fed into the black hole,
01:43similar to kindling, being regularly tossed in?
01:47Future observations may provide answers.
01:50In the meantime, the discovery of this exhaust vent might point astronomers
01:55to the origin of two mysterious and much larger structures
01:59around the center of the Milky Way.
02:01The Fermi bubbles seen in gamma rays by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
02:06and the e-Rosita bubbles detected by ESA's newest X-ray telescope.
02:11Both of these are pairs of structures
02:14extending thousands of light-years away from the center of the galaxy.
02:19Chandra continues to show how fascinating and complex
02:23the center of our Milky Way galaxy is.