The Milky Way isn’t any bizarre spiral galaxy, however as a substitute options an elongated bar of stars at its heart with mysteries that astronomers are nonetheless making an attempt to unlock.
The Milky Way’s central area has not only a spherical core however an elongated bar of stars. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Damage (SSC/Caltech)
It’s tough to see the form of one thing from inside it — and nowhere is that more true than in our personal Milky Way Galaxy. It wasn’t till 1923 that Edwin Hubble discovered definitive proof that the Milky Way was simply one in every of many different galaxies. And even after that, for many years, the form of Milky Way was assumed to be a standard spiral galaxy.
However in 2005, a workforce led by astronomers from the College of Wisconsin-Whitewater found strong evidence that the Milky Way is in reality a barred spiral galaxy. The workforce used information from NASA’s Spitzer Area Telescope, an infrared telescope that was a forerunner to the present James Webb Area Telescope. Observing in infrared mild allowed Spitzer to see by way of interstellar dust and survey 30 million stars within the aircraft of the Milky Way in a undertaking named the Galactic Legacy Mid-Airplane Survey Extraordinaire, or GLIMPSE. That survey indicated that there was a protracted bar of stars extending from the galactic core — a characteristic seen in lots of different galaxies.
Right this moment, we all know that the Milky Way is certainly a barred spiral galaxy. However astronomers nonetheless haven’t gained an entire image of the bar, making it tough to know exactly how massive it’s. However the European Area Company’s Gaia spacecraft — which is making the most important ever 3D map of the celebrities within the Milky Way — is beginning to immediately measure the galactic bar for the primary time.
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