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The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with curved arms stretching out into space. Most depictions of our galaxy show it as being rather flat, but data from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment at the university suggests the opposite. The team, who describe our galaxy as being less a flat disc and more a “wobbly, uncooked pizza crust,” mapped the position of a specific type of star called Cepheids. Cepheids are pulsating stars and it’s easy for researchers to measure the distance between them and Earth. Using data from 2,431 Cepheids, the team was able to create its incredibly detailed...

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, makes for a pretty space picture, and it looks normal at a distance. But a new 3D map reveals a surprise: The Milky Way is being warped and twisted by its stars. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, in which stars and gas clouds exist mainly in its two spiral "arms." Our massive neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is also a spiral. Spiral galaxies usually appear very flat and easy to see through a telescope, said the researchers behind the new map, published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. Using 1,339 large, pulsating stars...

Explanation: In the 1920s, examining photographic plates from the Mt. Wilson Observatory's 100 inch telescope, Edwin Hubble determined the distance to the Andromeda Nebula, decisively demonstrating the existence of other galaxies far beyond the Milky Way. His notations are evident on the historic plate image inset at the lower right, shown in context with ground based and Hubble Space Telescope images of the region made nearly 90 years later. By intercomparing different plates, Hubble searched for novae, stars which underwent a sudden increase in brightness. He found several on this plate and marked them with an "N". Later, discovering that...