By Ron Cowen
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Astronomers have produced the sharpest infrared portrait of the central 300 light-years of the Milky Way, showing details as small as 20 times the length of the solar system.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/9459.jpg?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1)
Seen in visible light, much of the crowded core is cloaked in dust clouds. But infrared light penetrates the dust, providing a clear view of this turbulent region, which houses a supermassive black hole at its very center and lies 26,000 light-years from Earth.
The false-color composite combines ultrasharp images taken at short infrared wavelengths by the Hubble Space Telescope with lower-resolution images taken at longer infrared wavelengths by the Spitzer Space Telescope.