Our planet is some 30,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. When you see the "Milky Way" overhead on a summer night under dark skies, you are seeing the center or core of our giant, spiral galaxy.
The billions of stars in the core of our galaxy are so luminous that you could easily read the local newspaper sitting in your garden were it not for the obscuring effect of dust and gas clouds along our line of sight. But in a few places there are "windows" in the dust and gas that allow us to gaze deeply, as through a tunnel, into the center of the galaxy. The Sagittarius "Star Cloud" is one of these tunnels. You can clearly see the huge black areas in this image, which are giant clouds of dust. At the center of this field is the small open star cluster NGC6603 (sometimes called the "little star cloud").
Center of the Milky Way Galaxy
Date Taken:July 5, 2005
Location Taken: Conditions of Location:FWHM 1.8
Equipment Used:Takahashi Sky90 3.5" apochromat refractor telescope with field flattener, SBIG ST-10XME CCD camera, Astrodon RGB filters.
Processing Used:12x30 sec LRGB, unguided, processed in Maxim DL and Photoshop (total exposure 24 minutes).
Distance from Location:30,000 light years
Constellation:Sagittarius (the "archer")
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