A composite of X-ray and radio data showing galactic center filament G359.13142-0.20005. (Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Northwestern Univ./F. Yusef-Zadeh et al; Radio: NRF/SARAO/MeerKat; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk)
Have you ever had an X-ray taken of your bones? Well, so has the Milky Way. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory regularly images our home galaxy, and a recent scan caught something that might be familiar to some of you: a fractured “bone.”
The bone-like structure in the image above was imaged using radio data from MeerKAT radio array in South Africa and the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array in New Mexico — you’ll notice a slight fracture in the structure a little more than a third of the way down.