Our galaxy is quite ravishing as it unfolds right before our eyes. Astronomers are thrilled anytime they find something peculiar about it because they’re closer to solve some long-standing mysteries.
A recent discovery unveils that Milky Way has an odd break in its spiral arms. As per astronomers ‘ observations, such a thing looks more like a splinter popping out from a board of wood.
Here is what you need to know.
What’s Wrong With Milky Way?
NASA’s JPL (Jet Propulsion came across quite the discovery recently. Apparently, Milky Way has a broken arm that could unveil key details about its galactic history.
Finding such a thing is intriguing yet shocking because our planet is inside the galaxy. Describing the difficulty of the recent work, the JPL researchers stated that it’s somehow like standing in Times Square, trying to sketch the island of Manhattan. How great is that, though?
How they did it?
Researchers used the infrared or heat-seeking eyes of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and teamed up with the ESA’s Gaia mission.
They focused more on a close area of one of the galaxy’s arms, dubbed the Sagittarius Arm.
The combined data revealed that Sagittarius is filled with young stars that travel at about the same speed and direction. But how is this relevant to the fact that Milky Way has a broken arm?
“A key property of spiral arms is how tightly they wind around a galaxy,” explained Michael Kuhn, the lead-author of the recent study, and an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.
However, as you can see below, too, the group of stars and gas clouds in our galaxy is sticking out like a broken arm 3,000 light-years long:
Moreover, the new data reveal that the pitch angle of Sagittarius is about 12 degrees. Such a thing is still puzzling astronomers’ work, though.
More research will soon follow as an attempt to reveal other key details about the recent discovery.