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August 16, 2005
Bar at Milky Way's heart revealed
Topics: General Science
[The massive new survey of stars reveals a definitive bar feature at the centre of the Milky Way, some 27,000 light years in length (Artist's impression: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R Hurt, SSC/Caltech)]
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 2MASS bolstered the case for a bar, but dust in the centre of the galaxy obscured the observations.
Now, astronomers have used Spitzer to peer through that dust at slightly longer wavelengths, observing 30 million stars in the galactic plane in the region around the centre of the galaxy.
Posted by Richard at August 16, 2005 10:18 PM
Fascinating!
Posted by: purple_kangaroo at August 17, 2005 1:05 AM
Have the studies determined whether it is a "open bar"? That's a long ride if you have to pay...
Posted by: Kevin at August 17, 2005 3:47 AM
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