Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/TUM/M.Revnivtsev et al.); IR (NASA/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE Team)

This extremely deep Chandra X-ray Observatory image has resolved a long-standing mystery about an X-ray glow along the plane of the Milky Way. The Chandra results show that the X-ray emission in the region is caused by hundreds of point-like sources, implying that the glow along the plane of the Galaxy is due to millions of such sources. In this image, the Chandra field-of-view, a region located only about 1.4 degrees from the Galactic Center, is pulled out from an infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Provider: Chandra X-ray Observatory

Image Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/gridge/

Curator: Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA

Image Use Policy: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/image_use.html