The center of the galaxy is a giant black hole that is hiding inside of "Sagittarius A," which is this glowy spot in infrared and radio waves because of the heat emitted from matter "accreting" into the black hole. Accreting means growing bigger, which I don't really get, I guess things get bigger when they heat up? Maybe matter is accelerating towards the black hole, heating up and expanding before disappearing? No clue there. Well anyway, this picture is pretty awesome, I got it from the Sweet Astronomy Picture of the Day. While we are on the subject, I would also like to point out that the center of the galaxy is in the constellation of my astrological sign, Sagittarius, which we COULD say, if we were being sassy, either explains my massive ego OR that my heart is actually a black hole. Or that astrology is silly.
There is also this cool video that was on the APOD site:
I can't really watch videos very well on my computer anymore because all browsers on the Mac hate me, BUT what I can tell you is that it has this cool part where it shows the orbits of the closest stars around the black hole, including this star which gets 17 light-hours away from it!!! (Recall here that earth is 8 light-minutes from the sun) Well, anyway, I think the whole thing is pretty mind-expanding.
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