Two Telescopes Survey the Galactic Center
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Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Video imagery:
- 2MASS telescope image of the galactic plane: NASA
- Annotated video zooming into the Milky Way’s galactic bulge: NASA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI); Acknowledgment: VISTA, Caltech, Caltech/IPAC, 2MASS, Sean Terry (UMD), Jay Anderson (STScI), Dante Minniti (UNAB), Ignacio Toledo (ALMA), Martin Kornmesser (ESO)
- Annotated image of the galactic center region: NASA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI); Acknowledgment: VISTA, Dante Minniti (UNAB), Ignacio Toledo (ALMA), Martin Kornmesser (ESO)
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A collage of vibrantly colored photos of stars, galaxies and other celestial objects scroll past. A title: News From the Universe.
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Text: Two Telescopes Survey the Galactic Center. May 21, 2026. A photo captures a glowing horizontal band of brown and white.
Text: Two powerful NASA telescopes are joining forces to get the best scientific results possible from studying the center of our galaxy.
The "galactic bulge" is the concentration of stars, dust and gas around the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, named Sagittarius A star.
The image zooms in and marks the location of Sagittarius A. star within the horizontal galactic bulge. Slanted orange and blue lines, with orange representing WFC3 slash UVIS and blue representing ACS slash WFC, appear below Sagittarius A. star.
A box labeled Roman surrounds the orange and blue slanted lines. Text: The Hubble Space Telescope is surveying this region in advance of a planned survey by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which NASA expects to launch later this year.
By comparing data from the two telescopes, astronomers will be better able to identify changes that indicate planets and stars passing in front of one another, allowing for very specific measurements.
Hubble is also building a new catalog of stars in this region. When Roman later finds planets orbiting those stars, astronomers will better understand the cosmic environment the planets inhabit.
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This news was brought to you in part by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD.