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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Deriving the shape of the Galactic stellar disc

While analysing the complex structure of the Milky Way, an international team of astronomers from Italy and the United Kingdom has recently derived the shape of the Galactic outer stellar disc, and provided the strongest evidence that, besides being warped, it is at least 70% more extended than previously thought.

Their findings will be reported in an upcoming issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics, and is a new step in understanding the large-scale structure of our Galaxy.

Using the 2MASS all-sky near infrared catalogue, Yazan Momany and his collaborators reconstructed the outer structure of the Galactic stellar disc, in particular, its warp. Their work will soon be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Observationally, the warp is a bending of the Galactic plane upwards in the first and second Galactic longitude quadrants (0 < l < 180 degrees) and downwards in the third and fourth quadrants (180 < l < 360 degrees). Although the origin of the warp remains unknown, this feature is seen to be a ubiquitous property of all spiral galaxies. As we are located inside the Galactic disc, it is difficult to unveil specific details of its shape.

Full story here: www.physorg.com/news11821.html

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I think that it's great we are attempting to find out how our galaxy is shaped, but until we can actually observe it as a whole, it's just pure guesswork.

[Maddad]

Then it's got to remain guesswork, Joe. We cannot actually see it until we get outside it, many thousands of light-years which means perhaps a million years.