The Galactic bulge through Herschel’s, XMM-Newton’s and INTEGRAL’s eyes, and beyond
Date: 17 Oct 2012
Copyright: ESA/Herschel/XMM-Newton/INTEGRAL/JEM-X/IBIS/Optical image: ESO & S. Brunier
Credits: ESA – C. Carreau, E. Kuulkers, S. Molinari, G. Pilbratt, P.M. Rodríguez Pascual, M. Santos-Lleó & C. Winkler
The central region of our Milky Way, the Galactic bulge, is a rich host of variable high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray sources.
After a short introduction illustrating INTEGRAL’s place in ESA’s fleet of astronomy and astrophysics satellites, the video looks inside the central part of our Galaxy to reveal these dynamic sources, which include X-ray binary systems with either a black hole or a neutron star, pulsars and remnants of supernova explosions.
First the central part as seen by Herschel is shown, followed by a superposition of the same region as seen by XMM-Newton (0.3-8 keV).
A number of these sources only shine brightly for a limited period of time – in some cases, they appear as a sudden bright flash and disappear shortly afterwards, whereas others are more persistent. The effect of this constantly changing environment gives the Galactic bulge the appearance of a dramatic cosmic light show.
First the variability around the Centre of our Galaxy as seen by XMM-Newton is shown (annotating colours using the 0.3-1-2.5-8 keV bands, from red, orange, yellow, blue, purple to white), from February 2002 to April 2009.
Then, superimposed on the Herschel infra-red image and an optical image of the Galactic bulge are the sources of high-energy radiation detected by INTEGRAL shown. The video presents INTEGRAL observations made between February 2005 and October 2011.
The first part of the video combines data gathered with JEM-X at soft X-ray energies (between 3 and 25 keV; represented in red, orange and yellow) and with IBIS/ISGRI at hard X-ray energies (between 18 and 100 keV; represented in blue, purple and white).
Zooming back out of the Milky Way shows a bird's eye view of the gamma and hard X-ray sources in our Milky Way detected by INTEGRAL.
____________________________________
Last Update: 2 Nov 2012
|
[mov]
05:38