Feature Space

At Home in the Universe

Astronomers lay bare the Milky Way’s biggest secrets

By Alexandra Witze

- More than 2 years ago

When Lewis and Clark started exploring the West, they didn’t know much about what lay beyond St. Louis. Neither, at first, did astronomers know much about cosmic realms beyond Uranus.

If Earth-dwellers could peer through clouds of dust, they’d see this bustle of activity around Sagittarius A* at the Milky Way’s core (shown in white in lower right).