A new visualization allows users to experience 500 years of cosmic evolution around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole , called Sagittarius A * thanks to the combination of data from the Chandra observatory and other telescopes with supercomputer simulations and virtual reality.
The visualization covers approximately 3 light years around Sagittarius A *. Its name is "VR Galactic Center" and you can see it below. It’s available for free on the Steam and Viveport VR stores.
Galactic Center VR
Each color represents different phenomena, including Wolf-Rayet stars (white), their orbits (gray), and hot gas due to the supersonic wind collisions observed by Chandra (blue and cyan). There are also regions where the cooler material (red and yellow) overlaps with the hot gas (purple).
The center of the galaxy is too distant for Chandra to detect individual examples of these collisions, but the overall X-ray brightness of this hot gas is detectable with Chandra’s X-ray vision .
Sagittarius A * is a very compact and bright radio source in the center of the Milky Way that is part of a larger structure called Sagittarius A. It is considered to contain a supermassive black hole . This 1,300-solar-mass black hole is in a cluster of seven stars.