The Center of Our Galaxy
After working on a series of drawings about the Webb telescope, inspired by the physical object itself, I became interested in one of its many intended purposes. The telescope will use its infrared camera to investigate the very center of mass of our Milky Way galaxy, helping us better understand our place in the universe.
These paintings are based on astronomers' recent observations of the center of our galaxy, mapping the stars in that region. They have calculated the orbital paths and periods of the stars closest to what they have determined to be a supermassive black hole, named Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), 26,000 light-years from Earth.
Based on a 3D mathematical model made from the data collected by the UCLA Galactic Center Group, using the Keck Telescope in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope Facility in Chile’s Atacama Desert, I have drawn elliptical shapes that depict these orbital paths of the closest stars orbiting Sgr A*.
Like much of my previous work, this series focuses on geometry, but instead of depicting the shapes of physical objects, these paintings describe the theoretical geometry of an orbital path.
