Sagittarius A
Chandra X-ray image showing newly discovered X-ray sources in the innermost 10 light years at the center of our galaxy. The white dot at the center of the image is an X-ray source that coincides with the radio position of the supermassive black-hole candidate Sagittarius A* to within about 10 light days. The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is about 26,000 light years from Earth. This Galaxy, in which we live, has a full extent of about 100,000 light years.

Image made with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS)
Credit: NASA/F. Baganoff (MIT) /G. Garmire (PSU)

Sagittarius A
False-color radio image of the HII region Sagittarius A West. The blue and green spiral pattern is formed by ionized gas falling towards or orbiting around the center of our galaxy. The bright white dot at the center of the image is the supermassive black-hole candidate Sagittarius A*. This object is believed to be a black hole containing 2.6 million times the mass of the Sun.

Image made with the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA)
Credit: F. Yusef-Zadeh (NWU)

Chandra X-ray Image with Scale Bar
Scale bar = 30 arcmin
Credit: NASA/MIT/PSU