Milky Way galaxy tagged posts

Astronomers used the powerful ALMA telescope to discover that in other parts of the Milky Way Galaxy (seen here) there is potentially a large population of young planets – similar in mass to Neptune or Jupiter – at wide-orbit that are not detectable by other current planet searching techniques...

An artist’s reconstruction of the Milky Way galaxy showing the locations of the various spiral arms. Astronomers have detected massive young stars forming in the outer part of the Scutum-Centarus Arm, the outermost portions of the galaxy. Credit: NASA

The sun is located inside one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, roughly 2/3 of the way from the galactic center to the outer regions. Because we are inside the galaxy, obscuration by dust and the confusion of sources along our lines-of-sight make mapping the galaxy a difficult task...