<P> Immanuel Kant stated in General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) that a large star was at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, and that Sirius might be the star . Harlow Shapley stated in 1918 that the halo of globular clusters surrounding the Milky Way seemed to be centered on the star swarms in the constellation of Sagittarius, but the dark molecular clouds in the area blocked the view for optical astronomers . In the early 1940s Walter Baade at Mount Wilson Observatory took advantage of wartime blackout conditions in nearby Los Angeles to conduct a search for the center with the 100 - inch (250 cm) Hooker Telescope . He found that near the star Alnasl (Gamma Sagittarii) there is a one - degree - wide void in the interstellar dust lanes, which provides a relatively clear view of the swarms of stars around the nucleus of our Milky Way Galaxy . This gap has been known as Baade's Window ever since . </P> <P> At Dover Heights in Sydney, Australia a team of radio astronomers from the Division of Radiophysics at the CSIRO, led by Joseph Lade Pawsey, used' sea interferometry' to discover some of the first interstellar and intergalactic radio sources, including Taurus A, Virgo A and Centaurus A. By 1954 they had built an 80 - foot (24 m) fixed dish antenna and used it to make a detailed study of an extended, extremely powerful belt of radio emission that was detected in Sagittarius . They named an intense point - source near the center of this belt Sagittarius A, and realised that it was located at the very center of our Galaxy, despite being some 32 degrees south - west of the conjectured galactic center of the time . </P> <P> In 1958 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided to adopt the position of Sagittarius A as the true zero co-ordinate point for the system of galactic latitude and longitude . In the equatorial coordinate system the location is: RA 17 45 40.04, Dec − 29 ° 00 ′ 28.1" (J2000 epoch). </P> <P> The exact distance between the Solar System and the Galactic Center is not certain, although estimates since 2000 have remained within the range 24--28.4 kilolight - years (7.4--8.7 kiloparsecs). The latest estimates from geometric - based methods and standard candles yield the following distances to the Galactic Center: </P>

Why is the center of the milky way so bright