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Jan.
13, 2003 |
Ring Around the Milky Way
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Artist's rendering
for illustration purposes only.
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A previously unseen band of stars beyond the edge
of the Milky Way galaxy has been discovered by a team of scientists
from Rensselaer, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The discovery could help to explain
how the galaxy was assembled 10 billion years ago.
Hidden from view behind stars and gas on the same
visual plane as the Milky Way, this ring of stars is approximately
120,000 light years in diameter, says Heidi Newberg, associate
professor of physics and astronomy at Rensselaer and a co-lead
investigator on the project. Traveling from Earth at the speed
of light, it would take 40,000 light years to reach the ring.
"These stars may be what's left of a collision
between our galaxy and a smaller, dwarf galaxy that occurred billions
of years ago," says Newberg. "It's an indication that
at least part of our galaxy was formed by many smaller or dwarf
galaxies mixing together."
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Gary Gold
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The research findings headlined last week's annual
meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle.
The research received worldwide media coverage, including major
science stories in USA Today, The
Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and on
CNN.com and MSNBC.com.
For more information, see press
release.
For information from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, go to: http://www.sdss.org/news/releases/20030106.milkyway.html
Read more: CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Washington
Post, Space.com
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