The European Space Agency’s Integral orbiting observatory has traced a mysterious glow at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy to at least 91 heavenly bodies.
The unprecedented sensitivity and precision of Integral’s telescope IBIS made possible the detection of individual objects buried inside clouds of gas and dust that for the past 30 years have appeared through all other instruments as a puzzling fog.
Scientists conducting high-flying balloon-borne experiments discovered the blur of so-called “soft” gamma rays, a form of radiation with energies similar to those emitted in medical X-rays, in the mid-1970s.
Francois Lebrun of Yvette, France, and an international team of astronomers describe the source of the rays as 91 clearly defined objects, possibly black holes or the remains of exploded stars energized by celestial swirling dervishes called pulsars, and a host of other less well-defined space entities. The report appears in the journal Nature.
INTEGRAL was launched in October 2002 on a Russian Proton rocket. It will now make a complete census of buried black holes in the Milky Way.
