Chandra Release - May 27, 2021 Visual Description: Galactic Center This vertical panoramic image depicts an area about the center of Milky Way, with the field of view extending 1000 light years above and below the galaxy. The image resembles colorful gas clouds streaked with fine threads, dotted with a handful of brilliant white shapes. Throughout the image are tiny orange and purple dots set against a black backdrop. This rendering was made using a giant mosaic of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. In this release, the image is presented both labeled and unlabeled. Across the center of the image is a horizontal, bright purple cloud with a glowing white core. This is the plane of the Milky Way, the disk where most of the Galaxy's stars reside. The labeled image indicates that within the glowing white core are several star clusters, clouds of gas and dust, and the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. Also in this translucent cloud are thin, wispy streaks of gray that resemble fine hairs. These lines are rendered in pale grays and purples, and appear somewhat blurry, like fast-moving streaks of light captured in a photograph. These are threads of superheated gas and magnetic fields found primarily near the center of the Galaxy. Below the plane of the Milky Way, near our lower left, is a bright, brick orange cloud. Above the plane, to our upper right, is a thin lilac cloud with some orange mist on the left. The orange cloud and mist are large plumes of hot gas. The colors represent different X-ray energies observed by Chandra. Even brighter than the glowing white core in the Milky Way are the brilliant white shapes that appear throughout the image. Two can be found to the right of the core, and two below the galaxy's plane. These are X-rays reflected from dust around bright X-ray sources.