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by davidhansen 5294 days ago
That may be about to change, however. Astronomers have spotted a cloud of gas with a mass about three times that of Earth that's on a trajectory that will have it pass close to Sgr A in 2013*

If this is for real, I am ridiculously humbled by the power of modern astronomy. It's pretty damned amazing to me that we have the ability to detect the location, dimension, and trajectory of a mere 3 earth-masses of thin, amorphous gas 27k light years away, in the noisiest and densest part of the galaxy.
2 comments
johno215 5293 days ago
Based on the Nature article abstract images it appears they were able to image the cloud using the VLT telescope. I got confused about L'-band for a second. Thought they were talking about L-band.

Feel free to correct me if someone has read the article.

[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...

[2] http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/vlt.html

[edited for mistake]

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Tuna-Fish 5293 days ago
This is the public webcast of the ESO VLT on the issue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFLkewQIzoA&feature=youtu...

I'd just like to point out that seeing that cloud isn't actually nearly as hard as getting direct observations of planets around other stars. The cloud is very brightly lit by all the stars around it, and is far enough from other light sources that you can just point a telescope at it without needing any tricks. Contrast this to looking at much dimmer planets that are very close to very bright stars. And we've been able to do that for big enough planets since 2008.

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