Centre of Milky Way Galaxy: Find the Black Hole?

This stunning new view of the Milky Way's centre was produced using an amateur telescope at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal observing site in Chile.

Astrophotographer and ESO engineer Stephane Guisard combined more than 1200 images from a 10-centimetre telescope to create this detailed view of the galaxy's core, where a supermassive black hole lies hidden.

Dark patches of dust are silhouetted against the galaxy's bright central region across the image, and bright stars illuminate gas and dust clouds, making nebulae, on the right.

This is the second in a series of three images to be released by ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy.

The first image, part of which is available here, was a portrait of the entire sky.

(Image: ESO/S. Brunier/S. Guisard)