The center of our Milky Way galaxy is aglow 🌌⁣ ⁣ This 2004 NASAChandraXRay image was produced by combining a dozen observations of a region 130 light-years across, in the center of the Milky Way. Chandra is a telescope designed to detect X-ray emissions from very hot regions of the universe. ⁣ ⁣ Here, the bright colors represent X-rays according to their energy level: low (red ) medium (green) and high (blue). Thanks to Chandra, astronomers have been able to identify thousands of point-like X-ray sources: neutron stars, black holes, white dwarfs, foreground stars, and background galaxies. What remains is a diffuse X-ray glow extending from the upper left to the lower right, along the direction of the disk of the galaxy.⁣ ⁣ The spectrum of the diffuse glow is consistent with a hot gas cloud that contains two components: 10-million-degree Celsius gas, and 100-million-degree gas. The diffuse X-rays appear to be the brightest part of a ridge of X-ray emission that stretches for several th...