The Galactic Center in Infrared

The center of our Galaxy is a busy place. In visible light , much of the Galactic Center is obscured by opaque dust . In infrared light , however, dust glows more and obscures less, allowing nearly one million stars to be recorded in the above photograph . The Galactic Center itself appears on the right and is located about 30,000 light years away towards the constellation of Sagittarius . The Galactic Plane of our Milky Way Galaxy , the plane in which the Sun orbits, is identifiable by the dark diagonal dust lane . The absorbing dust grains are created in the atmospheres of cool red-giant stars and grow in molecular cloud s. The region directly surrounding the Galactic Center glows brightly in radio and high-energy radiation , and is thought to house a large black hole .