Now we are nearing the middle of the panorama, and looking toward the center of the galaxy. Huge dust clouds block our view but appear as gaps. In the early years of study of the galaxy these were thought to be areas empty of stars. Now we know otherwise. More clusters and nebulae mark the central plane, and in Sagittarius, below and a little left of center, is a star that appears fuzzy. This is actually a globular cluster, M22. As a class these clusters are interesting because they are very old, and not part of the spiral arms or central bulge, but in a large halo around the galaxy. That they are almost all seen only in one-half of the sky was an important clue to our location far from the center. Since they are dense concentrations of thousands of stars they delight stargazers.

The constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius stand on both sides of the galaxy center. At the head of Scorpius, above the central bulge, is Antares, a bright star embedded in a reflection nebula. Since Antares is a red-orange giant the nebula shines with that color. Blue reflection nebula surround nearby blue stars. Moving to the right of center we are looking at the southern Milky Way, not visible from the northern hemisphere. The two bright stars along the center line, at about galactic longitude 310, are Alpha and Beta Centauri. The former is actually a pair of Sun-like stars in close orbit around each other. In a larger orbit around the pair is a red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri, our closest neighbor at 4.26 light-years. Above Alpha and Beta and out of the plane is the huge globular cluster Omega Centauri. It looks like a bright star and is easy to see without a telescope, but the image shows a fringe of faint stars around it. Further right are more emission nebulae, including a large area at longitude 280-260, named for its discoverer, Colin Gum.