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Shown here (from left) are the Eagle, Omega, Triffid, and Lagoon Nebulae, imaged by NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. These nebulae are part of a structure within the Milky Way’s Sagittarius Arm that is poking out from the arm at a dramatic angle. Shown here (from left) are the Eagle, Omega, Triffid, and Lagoon Nebulae, imaged by NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. These nebulae are part of a structure within the Milky Way’s Sagittarius Arm that is poking out from the arm at a dramatic angle. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Scientists have spotted a previously unrecognized feature of our Milky Way...

“A Perilous Journey” –Our Solar System Has Completed 20 Orbits of the Milky Way Posted on Jun 26, 2021 in Astronomy, Milky Way Galaxy, Science In 1999 astronomers focusing on a star at the center of the Milky Way, measured precisely how long it takes the sun to complete one orbit (a galactic year) of our home galaxy: 226 million years, bobbing our fraught journey through the disc of the Milky Way, drifting through ghostly spiral arms and the darkness of dense nebulae, keeping a constant 30,000 light years between Earth and the violent galactic core. The last time the...

The Milky Way had a previously unknown big sibling that was torn apart by the neighboring Andromeda galaxy long ago, a new study suggests. Andromeda and the Milky Way are the two largest members of the Local Group, a collection of more than 50 galaxies packed into a dumbbell-shaped region of space about 10 million light-years across. Andromeda was not kind to the onetime third-biggest member of this family, devouring it about 2 billion years ago, according to the new research. "Astronomers have been studying the Local Group — the Milky Way, Andromeda and their companions — for so long,"...

"We Truly Don't Know What It Is" --Mystery Milky-Way Spectrum of Light Observed 'Not Produced By Any Known Emission' April 17, 2018   "We use special telescopes to catch X-ray light in the sky, and while looking at these X-rays, the telescopes noticed an unexpected feature and captured a spectrum of light, which is not produced by any known atomic emission," said University of Miami astrophysicist Nico Cappelluti. "This emission line is now called the 3.5 kiloelectron volt (keV). One interpretation of this emission line is that it's produced by the decay of dark matter." "This 3.5 keV emission line is...

Mysterious Filament is Stretching Down Towards the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole Article written: 23 Dec , 2017 by Matt Williams The core of the Milky Way Galaxy has always been a source of mystery and fascination to astronomers. This is due in part to the fact that our Solar System is embedded within the disk of the Milky Way – the flattened region that extends outwards from the core. This has made seeing into the bulge at the center of our galaxy rather difficult. Nevertheless, what we’ve been able to learn over the years has proven to be immensely...

Astronomers find evidence of enormous black hole one hundred thousand times more massive than the sun in a gas cloud near the galaxy’s centre If confirmed, the black hole will rank as the second largest black hole ever seen in the Milky Way after the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*. An enormous black hole one hundred thousand times more massive than the sun has been found hiding in a toxic gas cloud wafting around near the heart of the Milky Way. If the discovery is confirmed, the invisible behemoth will rank as the second largest black hole ever...

It's a common theme in science fiction, but migrating to planets beyond our solar system will be a lot more complicated and difficult than you might imagineThe idea that humans will eventually travel to and inhabit other parts of our galaxy was well expressed by the early Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who wrote, “Earth is humanity’s cradle, but you’re not meant to stay in your cradle forever.” Since then the idea has been a staple of science fiction, and thus become part of a consensus image of humanity’s future. Going to the stars is often regarded as humanity’s destiny,...

The Corrugated Galaxy The disk of the Milky Way Galaxy disk may actually be rippled. Two ringlike structures of stars wrapping around the Milky Way's outer disk now appear to belong to the disk itself. The results, outlined in a new study, show that the disk is about 60 percent larger than previously thought. Not only do the results extend the size of the Milky Way, they also reveal a rippling pattern, which raises intriguing questions about what sent wavelike fluctuations rippling through the disk. The researchers said the likely culprit was a dwarf galaxy. It might have plunged...

Earth's Milky Way Neighborhood Gets More Respect Old picture: Local Arm a small "spur" of Milky Way. New picture: Local Arm probable major branch of Perseus Arm. CREDIT: Robert Hurt, IPAC; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF. Our Solar System's Milky Way neighborhood just went upscale. We reside between two major spiral arms of our home galaxy, in a structure called the Local Arm. New research using the ultra-sharp radio vision of the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) indicates that the Local Arm, previously thought to be only a small spur, instead is much more like the adjacent major arms,...

Hubble observations of a speedy galaxy weigh on the Milky Way and indicate that our galaxy is at least a trillion times as massive as the sunMilky Way GREAT GALAXY: The Milky Way maintains a fleet of some two dozen satellite galaxies whose motions help reveal its mass. Image: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team Although scientists know the masses of the sun and Earth, it's a different story for the galaxy. Mass estimates range widely: At the low end, some studies find that the galaxy is several hundred billion times as massive as the sun whereas the largest values exceed two trillion...

New radio wave observations are giving astronomers their closest look yet at the supermassive black hole believed to be lurking at the center of our galaxy. Reporting in the Sept. 4 Nature, a team has, for the first time, resolved features as small as the black hole’s event horizon — the gravitationally warped region from which nothing, not even light, can escape. “We have now entered a new era, one in which we can directly image structure at the event horizon of a black hole,” asserts Christopher Reynolds of the University of Maryland in College Park in a commentary accompanying...

Astronomers unveiled today what they are calling the best map ever produced of the Milky Way galaxy. The new view shows our spiral galaxy as it would look face-on to a very distant observer. The map is based on findings about the structural evolution of the Milky Way presented this week at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Missouri. Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater was among the scientists who presented results at a briefing today with reporters. The researchers determined that the Milky Way actually has two fewer major arms than previously believed....

Spiral arm of Milky Way looms closer than thought 19:00 08 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee The Milky Way is made of four main arms curving around its centre – astronomers measured the distance from Earth to a star-forming region called W3OH inside the Perseus arm (Image: Y. Xu et al/Science) One of the Milky Way's star-studded spiral arms lies twice as close to Earth as some previous estimates suggested. New research has produced the most accurate distance measurement ever made of the arm, which could help astronomers understand how our galaxy's spiral structure formed. The Milky Way...

The Milky Way is not a perfect spiral galaxy but instead sports a long bar through its centre, according to new infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Galaxies come in a wide variety of shapes usually thought to be produced by gravitational interactions with nearby objects. Some spiral galaxies look like pinwheels, with their arms curving out from a central bulge, while others have a straight bar at their centres. Radio telescopes detected gas that hinted at a bar at the heart of the Milky Way in the late 1980s. A decade later, observations with the near infrared survey...

A 50-year-old map of the Milky Way will have to be redrawn after Australian astronomers made the astonishing discovery that our spiral galaxy has a huge, outflung arm, New Scientist reports. The vast gassy limb comprises an arc of hydrogen 77,000 light years long and several thousand light years thick, running along the Milky Way's outermost edge and sweeping around the four main arms that swirl out from the galaxy's core. As it is not in the visible part of the light spectrum, it cannot be seen by telescope. Astronomers at the Australia National Telescope Facility in the Sydney suburb...

Peering into a giant molecular cloud in the Milky Way galaxy - known as W49 - astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have discovered a whole new population of very massive newborn stars. This research was presented at the International Astronomical Union's 25th General Assembly held in Sydney, Australia, by ESO-scientist Joao Alves. With the help of infrared images obtained during a period of excellent observing conditions with the ESO 3.5-m New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the La Silla Observatory (Chile), the astronomers looked deep into this molecular cloud and discovered four massive stellar clusters, with hot and energetic...

Monday, 6 January, 2003, 17:58 GMTMilky Way's star 'doughnut' A ring of stars surrounds the Milky Way A vast, but previously unknown structure has been discovered around the edges of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The first large area surveys of the sky have revealed several hundred million stars surrounding the galaxy's main disc. The ring, which has the appearance of a giant doughnut, could be the remains of a satellite galaxy. Astronomers believe it could hold clues as to how the Milky Way and other galaxies evolved. Giant doughnutAn international team of astronomers looked at images of the Milky...