#SciArt is a human activity, but often #nature itself provides the brushes and pigments.

Last year the South African Radio #Astronomy Observatory released a stunning view of the core of the #MilkyWay captured by the MeerKAT radio #telescope

Here's my edited version, where the colours map the so-called spectral index, which tells us what causes the radio emission. Those filaments do look like brush strokes, don't they?

Press release: https://www.sarao.ac.za/media-releases/new-meerkat-radio-image-reveals-complex-heart-of-the-milky-way/

#astrodon #space #scicomm

https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/111/171/625/916/439/068/original/1dc4a47ac4255a6a.jpeg 

 If you want to download a high-resolution version of this image (under a CC-BY-NC license), you can do so from this link:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/astro_jcm/51847931721/ 

 @5864a332 Wow, amazing work! It does look a lot like a wild digital painting of sci-fi space art at first glance. I noticed some interesting textures across the full size version. Some kind of diffraction/interference pattern? Maybe the result of some image processing?