Hubble Telescope captures unprecedented view of Milky Way's 'galactic core'

Nasa's Hubble telescope now has an unprecedented view of the galactic core, the rotational centre of the Milky Way galaxy. A new video released by the Hubble team on 3 May shows how the telescope's infrared camera allowed scientists to peer into the heart of our Milky Way.

Hubble's infrared vision pierced the dusty heart of our Milky Way galaxy to reveal more than half a million stars at its core. Except for a few blue, foreground stars, the stars are part of the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster, the most massive and densest stellar cluster in our galaxy.

Located 27,000 light years away, this region is so packed with stars, it is equivalent to having a million suns crammed into the volume of space between us and our closest stellar neighbour, Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years away. At the very hub of our galaxy, this star cluster surrounds the Milky Way's central super-massive black hole, which is about four million times the mass of our sun.