The center of our Milky Way galaxy hosts the Central Molecular Zone, a ring-like structure of dense and molecular gas. It was created due to funneling action imparted by gravitational torques from the galactic bar. This visualization shows the gas surface mass density (in background color) locally transformed by the orientation of the magnetic field, using the line integral convolution technique. The main panel shows a face-on view, while the side panels show edge-on views. The scales of the images are roughly one kiloparsec across.

Methods: AREPO code