The first fast radio burst to be discovered in the Milky Way has been traced back to a magnetar — a neutron star with a strong magnetic field — 32,616 light-years away. Fast radio bursts are mysterious, brief pulses of energy whose origins have long been unclear but are used to probe the space across … Read more
Life on Earth can be traced back to the Milky Way crashing into a nearby dwarf galaxy more than five billion years ago, according to new research. The birth of the Sun is due to a close encounter with smaller loop-shaped companion galaxy called Sagittarius, say Spanish scientists. Analysis of the age of nearby stars indicates … Read more
No wonder these are heavenly pictures – they were all snapped by some of the world’s top night-sky photographers at amazing locations across the globe. They show the moon, the stars and meteor showers against some of the world’s most beautiful backdrops. And the experts who took the images have been sharing their top tips … Read more
A star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy does so in a way that proves physicist Albert Einstein right – again. The star, called S2, orbits Sagittarius A* in a rosette shape, blipping out from the elliptical orbit at random points – an idea predicted by Einstein over … Read more
Edge of the Galaxy: Milky Way is bigger than astronomers first thought after a study finds it extends 1.9 MILLION light years across – and most of that is dark matter The Milky Way disc of which Earth is part has a diameter of 260,000 light years Most of the Milky Way is made up … Read more
The Milky Way has a ‘kink’ or warp in its disc that ‘wobbles like a spinning top’ and it could have been created by an ongoing collision with a nearby dwarf galaxy. Observations from the European Space Agency Gaia mission helped scientists from the Turin Astrophysical Observatory track the warp as it orbits the galactic … Read more