Exciting news for space lovers! 🚀 A team of Chinese scientists has discovered that our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is much larger than previously believed. By analyzing near-infrared data from APOGEE, they found that the Milky Way's half-light radius is about 19,000 light-years—almost double the earlier estimate.
This new finding places the Milky Way in line with other local disk galaxies of similar mass, showing that it's a typical disk galaxy in terms of size. For years, studying our galaxy was challenging due to dust blocking our view. But with near-infrared observations, researchers could peek through the dust and get a clearer picture.
\"Less dust means better views in the near-infrared band,\" explained Lian Jianhui, lead author of the study published in Nature Astronomy. The team successfully mapped the surface density of stars of different ages from the center to the outer edges of the Milky Way for the first time.
The study also revealed that while the outer regions of the galaxy follow a classical exponential distribution, the inner regions have a nearly flat stellar density. Previously, scientists thought the Milky Way was a compact galaxy with a smaller half-light radius, but this new research turns that idea on its head, opening up fresh ways to understand our galaxy's structure and evolution.
