Milky Way Much More Massive Than Previously Thought

January 6th, 2009

When someone tells me that they were off by maybe 5-10% I can sort of understand when it comes to space. Apparently we were off by a hell of a lot more. Like 50% off.

Astronomers arrived at the new mass by using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope to make detailed images of the galaxy’s structure, measuring distances and motions of different areas of the Milky Way.

These high-precision measurements, presented here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, indicate that the galaxy’s speed at the position of our solar system (at a distance of 28,000 light-years from the galactic center) is about 600,000 mph (970,000 kph) to 100,000 mph (160,000 kph) faster than previously thought.

This means that the mass of the galaxy is about 50% greater than previously thought. Also, instead of being the puny little brother of the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighbor, we are much more of a competition to it now.

NASA also released this new photo of the center of the Milky Way today which reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This sweeping panorama is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core.

In other space news, astronomers are expected to enter a new study to expand out knowledge of the history of the universe. UK astronomers are set to expand our knowledge of the history of our Universe with a new project to map the inception and formation of galaxies.

Dr Seb Oliver at the University of Sussex speaking about their ground and air tools “it is fantastic to see major international astronomical facilities both on the ground and in space working in harmony to tackle the fundamental questions of galaxy formation and evolution”.