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Giant ring of stars discovered around Milky Way
Seattle, Jan 07 : A newly discovered giant ring of stars on the outskirts of the Milky Way could be evidence of our galaxy`s violent birth, astronomers said on Monday.
Seattle, Jan 07 : A newly discovered giant ring of stars on the outskirts of the Milky Way could be evidence of our galaxy's violent birth, astronomers said on Monday.
Two scientific teams saw the ring slowly circling outside the Milky Way, with perhaps 100 million to half a billion stars distributed around it. One commentator said it appeared to have been part of a smaller galaxy that was ripped apart by our galaxy's gravitational force.
"It's sort of like the smile on the Cheshire cat," said Bruce Margon of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who commented on the finding. "Everything else has disappeared, but this remaining, very well ordered wisp of stars is unmistakable ... telling you almost surely this was originally a collected satellite galaxy."
The ring was detected by scientists working on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an international collaboration that is making a detailed map of one-quarter of the entire sky.
Looking for patterns as they mapped the heavens, the scientists found tens of thousands of stars they didn't expect to see at the outer edge of the galaxy, in the direction of the constellation Monoceros (The Unicorn).
"We're beginning to see pieces of other galaxies, coming into our galaxy, being torn apart and incorporated," Heidi Newberg of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute said at a news conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.
"This ring of stars may be what's left of a collision between our Milky Way and a smaller, dwarf galaxy that occurred billions of years ago," Brian Yanny of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory said in a statement accompanying the briefing.
Generally, stars are expected to be more numerous toward the center of our galaxy, thinning out towards the edges. So it was a surprise to find a millions of stars out by the fringe, Newberg said.
The ring was detected by scientists working on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an international collaboration that is making a detailed map of one-quarter of the entire sky.
Looking for patterns as they mapped the heavens, the scientists found tens of thousands of stars they didn't expect to see at the outer edge of the galaxy, in the direction of the constellation Monoceros (The Unicorn).
"We're beginning to see pieces of other galaxies, coming into our galaxy, being torn apart and incorporated," Heidi Newberg of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute said at a news conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.
"This ring of stars may be what's left of a collision between our Milky Way and a smaller, dwarf galaxy that occurred billions of years ago," Brian Yanny of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory said in a statement accompanying the briefing.
Generally, stars are expected to be more numerous toward the center of our galaxy, thinning out towards the edges. So it was a surprise to find a millions of stars out by the fringe, Newberg said.
Bureau Report