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Is the Milky Way getting Bigger?

This is a composite image of NGC 4565 used in the new study. Credit: C. M. Lombilla / IAC

This is a composite image of NGC 4565 used in the new study. Credit: C. M. Lombilla / IAC

The galaxy we inhabit, the Milky Way, may be getting even bigger, according to Cristina Martínez-Lombilla, a PhD candidate at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Tenerife, Spain, and her collaborators. She will present the work of her team in a talk on Tuesday 3 April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Liverpool.

The Solar System is located in one of the arms in the disc of a barred spiral galaxy we call the Milky Way, with a diameter of about 100,000 light years. Our home galaxy consists of several hundred billion stars, with huge amounts of gas and dust, all intermingled and interacting through the force of gravity...

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