* Astronomy

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RE: Milky Way

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Spitzer Detects the 'Heartbeat' of Star Formation in the Milky Way Galaxy

Astronomers have used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope rather like a doctor's stethoscope to listen in on the "heartbeat" of star formation in our galaxy, a finding that will help trace the "life" of the Milky Way and other galaxies.
A key vital sign in people is our heart rate, or the number of beats the heart muscle makes in a given time. Galaxies, too, have a sort of heartbeat, which is their pace of forming new stars. This rate indicates a galaxy's activity level and gives clues about its "lifetime," or how long the celestial body might keep making new stars and planets before growing old and quiet.
Now astronomers have felt the pulse of star formation in the Milky Way more directly than ever before by using observations from Spitzer to count up baby stars in our galaxy. This information was then plugged into a computer simulation of galactic star formation, a novel technique which revealed that our home galaxy beats to a rhythm of creating about one star like our sun every year.
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Alien invaders pack the Milky Way

Around a quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way are invaders from other galaxies, new research from Swinburne University of Technology shows.
In a paper accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Swinburne astronomer Professor Duncan Forbes has shown that many of our galaxys star clusters are actually foreigners - having been born elsewhere and then migrating to our Milky Way.
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A Harvard scientist has created a simplified, intergalactic map of the Milky Way based on the London Underground tube map.

Credit S. Arbesman

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A NASA space telescope using Italian technology has discovered an interstellar ''engine'' bombarding the Earth with cosmic rays, scientists said Thursday.
Launched in June 2008, the Fermi telescope has found the first evidence for a long-held theory that the shells of energy and matter left behind by stellar explosions serve as accelerators for the high-energy particles that make up cosmic rays.
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Milky Way's true magnetism revealed

Monash University-led research has revealed the magnetic field at the Milky Way's core is at least 10 times stronger compared to the rest of the galaxy.
The discovery was made by a team of astrophysicists from Monash University, Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics, the University of Adelaide, and the University of Arizona in the United States.
Lead-author Dr Roland Crocker said the findings would change the way the scientists measure galaxies.
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Astronomers Map Dark Matter 'Beach Ball'

Scientists have mapped the shape of the dark matter that is surrounding our home galaxy, the Milky Way. According to their research, the Milky Way is sitting in a clump of dark matter that resembles a gigantic flattened beach ball. One astrophysicist says dark matter accounts for more than 70 percent of the mass in galaxies like ours.

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Scientists reveal Milky Way's magnetic attraction

An international research project involving the University of Adelaide has revealed that the magnetic field in the centre of the Milky Way is at least 10 times stronger than the rest of the Galaxy.
The evidence is significant because it gives astronomers a lower limit on the magnetic field, an important factor in calculating a whole range of astronomical data.
Researchers from the Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany, the University of Adelaide, Monash University and the United States have published their findings in Nature this week.
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Milky Way's dark matter 'turned on its side'

The cloud of dark matter that is thought to surround the Milky Way may be shaped like a squashed beach ball. This halo of invisible matter also seems to sit at an unexpected angle - which could be a strike against a theory that challenges Einstein's account of gravity.
Dark matter is the stuff cosmologists invoke to explain why there appears to be far less mass in the universe than they think there should be. If they're right, the Milky Way is embedded in a vast halo of the stuff that is roughly 10 times as massive as all the galaxy's stars and gas combined. But the exact shape of this halo - which could bear traces of the collisions that built the galaxy - is still unknown.
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Infrared-Visual Crossfade, Center of Milky Way (Annotated)

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