Astronomers spotted a disk of new stars toward the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, a region usually to see anything.
With the VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory, the astronomers found a way to see beyond the dusty sheet covering the area, Space.com reported.
"The central bulge of the Milky Way is thought to consist of vast numbers of old stars. But the VISTA data has revealed something new - and very young by astronomical standards!" Istvan Dekany, of the Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile, said in a press release.
The new stars in the previously undiscovered disk are known as Cepheids, which are as bright as they are strange and can experience swings in brightness over a matter of days or months, Space.com noted.
"All of the 35 classical Cepheids discovered are less than 100 million years old. The youngest Cepheid may even be only around 25 million years old, although we cannot exclude the possible presence of even younger and brighter Cepheids," Dante Minniti, of the Universidad Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, said in the release "This part of the galaxy was completely unknown until our VVV survey found it!"
The researchers published their observations in a new study.
"This discovery is a very powerful demonstration of the recent technological advancement in infrared astronomy," Dekany told Space.com. "[VISTA's] large field of view and superb near-infrared imaging capability allowed us to penetrate through the vast amount of interstellar dust that is blocking our view towards the inner Milky Way, and probe areas that are invisible in the optical light."
