Astronomers used a telescope based in Chile to make this dramatic discovery.
Peaking through a hole in the dust, the faint red glow is only just visible from Earth. According to The Mirror, the glare shines out of an area known as the 'Tilted Disk' and could shed light on the fundamental source of our spiral galaxy's power. In their observations, astronomers used WHAM (Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper), a telescope based in Chile.
The faint beacon is only just visible from Earth peaking through a hole in the dust. It is a telltale sign of ionized hydrogen gas coming from newly forming stars, say the US team. They diagnosed the source by comparing other colors of visible light coming from ionized nitrogen and oxygen. The Tilted Disk, named after its orientation, lies in the central bar region of the Milky Way.
Dr. Lawrence Haffner, of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Florida, said: "Without an ongoing source of energy, free electrons usually find each other and recombine to return to a neutral state in a relatively short amount of time. Being able to see ionized gas in new ways should help us discover the kinds of sources that could be responsible for keeping all that gas energized."
This article has been adapted from its original source.
