Twisted ring of gas orbits galactic center
Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - 15:00
in Astronomy & Space
The Herschel Space Observatory scanned the center of the galaxy in far-infrared and found a cool (in all senses of the word) twisting ring of rapidly orbiting gas clouds. The ring is estimated to have dimensions of 100 parsecs by 60 parsecs (or 326 by 196 light years) with a composite mass of 30 million solar masses.