Milky Way: bar galaxy
- Thursday, August 18 2005 @ 08:50 AM CST
- Contributed by: filbert
- Views: 2,590
New research indicates our galaxy has a bar:
A thin band of relatively old stars, the feature (represented by the bright, diagonal band at the center of the above illustration) is uncommon among spiral galaxies. Astronomers confirmed its presence after conducting the most detailed analysis ever made of the Milky Way.Yeah, I'm mainly doing this story to use the obvious "Milky Way Bar" headline.
Illustration courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)