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Galactic Center

The Galactic Center is the rotational center of the Milky Way galaxy, located approximately 25,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It is a densely populated region containing a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*, surrounded by a high concentration of stars, gas, and dust.

Source: nasa.gov

APODs including "Galactic Center"

The Solar Neighborhood

25/02/1998

The Solar Neighborhood
Image Credit: P. C. Frisch (U. Chicago), with thanks to C. Wellman / NASA APOD

You are here. The orange dot in the above false-color drawing represents the current location of the Sun among local gas clouds in the spiral Milky Way Galaxy. These gas clouds are so thin that we usually see right through them. Nearly spherical bubbles surround regions of recent star formation. The purple filaments near the Sun are gas shells resulting from star formation 4 million years ago in the Scorpius-Centaurus Association, located to the Sun's lower left. The Sun has been between spiral arms moving through relatively low density gas for the past 5 million years. In contrast, the Sun oscillates in the Milky Way plane every 66 million years, and circles the Galactic Center every 250 million years.