NASA's telescope trio peers into the Milky Way's heart; Check out the spectacular image

NASA estimates that there are at least 100 billion stars in our galaxy-- the Milky Way-- which is about 1,00,000 light-years across. In this unfathomably large galaxy reside uncountable objects including nebulae, black holes, planets (obviously), pulsars, and a supermassive black hole at the galactic centre. Using its trio of revered telescopes, NASA recently attempted to peer into the heart of our galaxy and the result is utterly enchanting. 

What did the telescopes see?

The image above was taken by combining the powers of the Hubble telescope, the Chandra X-ray telescope and the now-retired Spitzer telescope. According to NASA, it is a composite of pictures taken in two wavelengths of light-- infrared and X-ray-- and different colours have been assigned to different wavelengths. 

With their combined powers, the telescopes were able to peer through the dust and debris that otherwise obscured the core of the galaxy. This galactic core is represented in the bright white region on the right side of the image. The Hubble telescope-- which is designed to observe the universe in visible and infrared light-- unveiled stellar winds and radiation which are represented in the colours yellow and gold. These winds and radiation are burped out by massive stars that reside in the central part of our galaxy. 

The areas seen in red and orange show the turbulent core of the Milky Way through Spitzer's infrared vision. Infrared is the wavelength of light which is not visible to the naked eye but can be felt as heat. Spitzer uncovered areas of our galaxy which consist of hundreds of thousands of stars and stellar nurseries. Finally, the colours pink and blue which dominate the image are observations through the Chandra telescope's X-ray vision. 

NASA explained that the colour pink represents lower-energy X-rays whereas blue represents high energy. It further pointed out that the area in the bottom right of the image is where the supermassive black hole in our galaxy is diffusing the X-ray light.