File:Cosmic Candy Cane.jpg

English: This image shows the inner part of our galaxy, which hosts the largest and densest collection of giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way. These vast, cool clouds contain enough dense gas and dust to form tens of millions of stars like the Sun.

The composite image includes data from the Goddard-IRAM Superconducting 2-Millimeter Observer, ESA’s Herschel satellite, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope near the summit of Maunakea, Hawaii, and radio observations from the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, located near Socorro, New Mexico. The resulting image essentially color codes different emission mechanisms.

Blue and cyan features reveal cold dust in molecular clouds where star formation is still in its infancy. Yellow features, such as the Arches filaments and the Sagittarius B1 molecular cloud, reveal the presence of ionized gas and show well-developed star factories; this light comes from electrons that are slowed but not captured by gas ions. Red and orange regions show areas where high-speed electrons spiral in a magnetic field, such as in the prominent Radio Arc and Sagittarius A, the bright source at the galaxy’s center that hosts its supermassive black hole.

Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center