In the hunt to search out the outer limits of our galaxy, astronomers have found over 200 stars that kind the Milky Way’s edge, essentially the most distant of which is over a million light-years away—practically midway to the Andromeda galaxy.

The 208 stars the researchers recognized are referred to as RR Lyrae stars, that are stars with a brightness that may change as considered from Earth. These stars are usually previous and brighten and dim at common intervals, which is a mechanism that permits scientists to calculate how distant they’re. By calculating the gap to those RR Lyrae stars, the staff discovered that the farthest of the bunch was positioned about midway between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, one in all our cosmic next-door neighbors.

“This study is redefining what constitutes the outer limits of our galaxy,” mentioned Raja GuhaThakurta in a press release. GuhaThakurta is professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics on the University of California Santa Cruz. “Our galaxy and Andromeda are both so big, there’s hardly any space between the two galaxies.”

The Milky Way galaxy consists of some completely different elements, the first of which is a skinny, spiral disk about 100,000 light-years throughout. Our residence photo voltaic system sits on one of many arms of this disk. An inside and outer halo encompass the disk, and these halos comprise a number of the oldest stars in our galaxy.

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Previous research have positioned the sting of the outer halo at 1 million light-years from the Milky Way’s middle, however based mostly on the brand new work, the sting of this halo needs to be about 1.04 million light-years from the galactic middle. Yuting Feng, a doctoral scholar on the college working with GuhaThakurta, led the research and is presenting the findings this week on the American Astronomical Society assembly in Seattle.

“We were able to use these variable stars as reliable tracers to pin down the distances,” mentioned Yuting Feng, a doctoral scholar on the college working with GuhaThakurta. “Our observations confirm the theoretical estimates of the size of the halo, so that’s an important result.”

Space is huge and lonely—however we will really feel a bit cozier understanding that our galactic neighbor is nearer than we thought.