Message #245435

[Archangel]

This image shows the distribution of molecular gas at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The black cross mark indicates the position of “Sagittarius A*,” the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.

The clumps are each about 30,000 light-years away. One of the masses contains the black hole suspected to exist at the heart of the Milky Way. This disk-shaped clump is about 50 light-years across "and revolves around the supermassive black hole at a very fast speed," said study lead author Tomoharu Oka, an astronomer at Keio University in Japan. [Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]

The other three clumps are expanding at very fast speeds of more than 223,000 miles per hour (360,000 kilometers per hour), making the researchers think supernova explosions were the cause of this growth, with the fastest blooming of these clumps growing as if 200 supernovas went off inside it. Since the age of this clump is only thought to be about 60,000 years old, which suggests supernovas happened there every 300 years.

Such a high rate of supernovas suggests that many young, massive stars are concentrated inside. The researchers estimate a massive star cluster more than 100,000 times the mass of the sun lurks within, as big as the largest star clusters in the Milky Way.

"No matter how large the star cluster is, it is very difficult to directly see the star cluster at the center of the Milky Way galaxy," Oka explained. "The huge amount of gas and dust lying between the solar system and the center of the Milky Way galaxy prevent not only visible light, but also infrared light, from reaching the earth. Moreover, innumerable stars in the bulge and disc of the Milky Way galaxy lie in the line of sight."