NEW TECHIQUE PROVIDES FIRST CLEAR PICTURE OF THE CENTER OF THE MILKY WAY
23 December 2005 - National Science Foundation

Using a new laser "virtual star" at the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii, astronomers have taken the first clear picture of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, including the environs of a supermassive black hole at its very center.

"It's like getting Lasik surgery for the eyes," says team leader Andrea Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA. "Everything is much clearer now."

The 10-meter Keck II Telescope is the first instrument of its size to incorporate Laser Guide Star adaptive optics, in which a laser-generated reference point high in the Earth's atmosphere, a kind of artificial star, is used to correct the atmosphere's distortions and clear up the the telescope's images.

Ghez and her colleagues, working with support from the National Science Foundation, have now used this technology to take snapshots of the center of the galaxy, 26,000 light years away.

Their findings are published in the Dec. 20 edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The twin Keck telescopes, located atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, are operated by the California Association for Research in Astronomy on behalf of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA.

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