Galactic Center

The Galactic Center is the rotational center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is located at a distance of about 8 kiloparsecs in the brightest part of the Milky Way, in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.

Because of cool interstellar dust along the line of sight, the Galactic Center cannot be studied at visible, ultraviolet or soft X-ray wavelengths. The available information about the Galactic Center comes from observations at gamma ray, hard X-ray, infrared, sub-millimetre and radio wavelengths. The complex radio source Sagittarius A contains an intense radio source, Sagittarius A*, which many astronomers believe may be a black hole at the center of our galaxy.