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Scientists have discovered a strange “break” in the spiral arms of our Milky Way galaxy that could tell us more about its galactic history.
The clustering of young stars and gaseous regions is described by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as resembling “a shard sticking out of a plank of wood” from the plane of the spiraling Milky Way’s arms.
Finding the functionality was a feat in itself, as Earth is inside the Milky Way. In a statement, JPL officials said the difficulty in carrying out such research was a bit like standing in Times Square while trying to draw a map of Manhattan Island.
Related: See a virtual map of the Milky Way from the European spacecraft Gaia
Researchers located the feature using infrared or heat-seeking eyes from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (before the observatory retired in January 2020) and the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which measures distances and stellar movements. Gaia’s last major data release was in July.
The new study focused on a region adjacent to one of the arms of the Milky Way, called the Sagittarius arm, which is home to the famous “Pillars of Creation” star stacks that are part of the Nebula. ‘Eagle (Messier 16.) Between Spitzer and Gaia, the combined data showed that Sagittarius is full of young stars that move in space, at almost the same speed and in the same direction.
Quiz: How well do you know the Milky Way?
“A key property of spiral arms is the force with which they wrap around a galaxy,” Michael Kuhn, astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology and lead author of the new article, said in the JPL statement.
Kuhn added that earlier models of the Milky Way suggested coiling, measured by the “pitch angle” to a perfect 0 degree circle, previously suggesting that Sagittarius had a pitch angle of around 12 degrees. . The new observations show that the pitch angle of Sagittarius is almost 60 degrees. Why is still not clear, however.
Astronomers are still trying to figure out how and why the arms of galaxies form, and JPL said the new study may provide some clues. Since the stars of the newly discovered entity formed around the same time and in the same area, they were likely influenced by larger changes occurring in the Milky Way. Such changes include the gravity and shear associated with the rotation of the galaxy.
“This structure is a small piece of the Milky Way, but it could tell us something important about the galaxy as a whole,” said co-author Robert Benjamin, astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, in the same press release.
Benjamin is also principal investigator of the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinary (GLIMPSE) catalog, which the new study also used. GLIMPSE includes approximately 100,000 newborn stars discovered by Spitzer during his lifetime.
A peer-reviewed study based on the research was published in the July 2021 issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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