Even while looking out into the endless expanses of space, astronomers are still learning about our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
According to Discovery News, authors of a study published in the Astrophysical Journal say they discovered a new stretch of stars that may actually belong to the Milky Way Galaxy. If so, it would expand the galaxy's size by 50 percent.
"In essence, what we found is that the disk of the Milky Way isn't just a disk of stars in a flat plane - it's corrugated," study co-author Heidi Newberg, professor of physics, applied physics, and astronomy in the Rensselaer School of Science, said in a press release. "As it radiates outward from the sun, we see at least four ripples in the disk of the Milky Way. While we can only look at part of the galaxy with this data, we assume that this pattern is going to be found throughout the disk."
The researchers spotted the Monoceros Ring some 65,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way. Going forward, the team of astronomers will try to get higher resolution images of the ring and possibly other similar stretches of stars.
"It looks to me like maybe these patterns are following the spiral structure of the Milky Way, so they may be related," Newberg told Discovery News. "We thought it was a tidal debris stream - a dwarf galaxy that came in and spread itself out in this big ring. For 15 years, there's been a controversy in the field where half the astronomers think it's a tidal stream and half the astronomers think its something in the disk. I was in the stream camp.
"What I was trying to do was find more evidence that it was streams. It took a very long time to get this result, partly because I had to change my whole way of thinking. It now looks to me like it's part of the disk."
