From the analysis of all available data collected by the satellite XMM-Newton in the range of the X-rays, an international team has established the most detailed map of the hot gas of the central region of the Galaxy.
Bubbles, lobes and filaments are listed in this study, some for the first time. This gas, with a temperature of several millions of degrees, traces episodes of intense activity in this complex region of the sky. Supernovae, stellar winds from massive stars and in particular outbursts from the central super-massif black hole of the Galaxy, Sgr A*, are mentioned in order to explain the diffuse X-ray emission detected by the European observatory XMM-Newton.
This work, carried out with the contribution of researchers of the Atroparticule et Cosmologie laboratory of Paris, of the Service d’Astrophysique of CEA-Irfu of Saclay and of the CSNSM of Orsay, with the support of CNES, has led to a compilation of an atlas of diffuse X-ray sources of the central regions of the Galaxy. This database will be extremely useful for future complementary studies, in the X-ray range and at other wavelengths. These results are published in the MNRAS journal and are the subject of an ESA press release.
Credits: ESA.
he central regions of the Milky Way represent one of the richest laboratory for modern astrophysics due of the large variety of the objects present there, and because of this they have been surveyed many time in particular in the X-ray domain between 0.1 and 10 keV. This energy range is particularly adapted to trace the presence of an essential, still little understood, component of the diffuse emission, the hot gas. With the purpose of drawing a detailed map of the diffuse structures ...
See more at: https://sciences-techniques.cnes.fr/en/bubbles-and-filaments-heart-milky-way