The Dusty Magnets of the Milky Way
This Impressionistic swirl of color represents the churning magnetic fields in giant dust clouds near the center of the galaxy.
The colors represent different temperatures of interstellar dust. Cool, dense dust is green; warmer dust is pink. The magnetic field lines, showing the direction of force, were undetectable before now.
“The nation that controls magnetism will control the universe.” So maintained Dick Tracy, the fictional detective in the comic strip by Chester Gould, in 1962.
About seven stars are born each year in the Milky Way, our home galaxy. They come from dust and to dust they eventually return. Now, a celestial image, an Impressionistic swirl of color in the center of the Milky Way, represents a first step toward understanding the role of those magnetic fields in the cycle of stellar death and rebirth.
The image was produced by David Chuss, a physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and an international team of astronomers. The project is known as FIREPLACE, for Far-InfraRed Polarimetric Large Area CMZ Exploration. The team’s map reveals previously invisible details in a stretch of the central Milky Way 500 light-years wide.
