The closest galaxy to our own is the majestic Andromeda galaxy, a collection of a trillion stars located a “mere” 2 million light years away. New research suggests that, contrary to previous estimates, this galaxy isn’t much bigger than the Milky Way, and is practically our twin. This means our galaxy won’t be…
This might come as a surprise, but we don’t really know what our own galaxy looks like. We can only see it from our lonely point in space, and we can’t leave it to get a picture from up above. Scientists want to change that—and they’re getting closer.
“The void” is more than a metaphor for gnawing existential pain. In fact, new research from an international team of scientists suggests that a huge void outside our extragalactic neighborhood could be impacting the way our galaxy—and others around it—move.
Using two of the world’s largest configurable telescopes, scientists have created the most detailed map yet of hydrogen atoms the Milky Way.
Since finding a perfectly dark sky is rare in our electrically-powered world, we at Gizmodo like to highlight the areas that still remain and the photography projects that explore them. This week’s photo series comes from the Altiplano salt flats (Salar de Uyuni) in Bolivia, where a team journeyed to the site and…
An international team of astronomers has discovered a huge expanse of space near the center of the Milky Way that’s devoid of young stars. This stellar desert extends for 8,000 light-years from the galactic core—and it hasn’t produced new stars for hundreds of millions of years.
Our world is getting brighter, as we turn more and more lights on across the planet. But all that light shining from the ground makes it harder to see the lights shining from the sky. It’s now gotten so bad that the Milky Way is almost impossible to see in most of the United States.
Researchers scanning the skies just got a big surprise. They spotted a humongous galaxy orbiting our own, where none had been seen before. It appeared, seemingly, out of nowhere.
Looking at these spiral galaxies glowing brightly against the dark, it’s hard to imagine that they could be so easily missed—but they were right up until now, when an astronomical survey catalogued them as equal to the biggest and brightest galaxies ever seen.
Seven years after their last effort at mapping our Galaxy, the APEX telescope has given us something even more complete: A map of the galaxy that covers four times the area of its previous best.
Astronomers just uncovered hundreds of hidden galaxies a mere 250 million light years away from Earth—well within our own galactic neighborhood. But how did they stay unknown for so long? The fault isn’t with them, it’s with our own Milky Way.
The cosmos is littered with clouds of star-forming gas, but few are as well studied as the Smith Cloud, set to crash into our galaxy in 30 million years. God-fearing humans might ask: Where did this unholy dust ball come from, and why is it heading straight for us? Now, science has the answer.
How big is this photo? So big that just by taking it, astronomers found over 50,000 new stars and other bright space objects.
Created by stitching together over 400,000 taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope, YouTube user daveachuk made this incredibly beautiful video that makes it feel as if you’re floating along the Milky Way. The finished footage is breathtaking and makes it seem as if you’re just looking out a window as you fly through the…
Scientists working with the Planck Satellite have produced a new polarization map of the Milky Way in microwaves, providing an unprecedented view of a rather dramatic electromagnetic loop discovered over a half-century ago.
Mapping the outer fringes of our universe is, obviously, a tremendously tricky task. But we should be able to get the parameters of our own galaxy pretty easily, right? Well, maybe not. And there’s a reason why.
The merger of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy won’t happen for another 4 billion years, but the recent discovery of a massive halo of hot gas around Andromeda may mean our galaxies are already touching.
Do you think you know the Milky Way? You don't know the Milky Way.
Our sun has only been around for 4.5 billion years — which means it missed the cute early years of the Milky Way galaxy. If you were standing on a planet 10 billion years ago, when the Milky Way was relatively young, the night sky would have looked very different.
