11/8/2023 0 Comments Spiral galaxy definition![]() The Milky Way is known to have two main spiral arms, the Perseus arm and the Scutum-Centaurus arm. "The position of the spiral arms is different and also the strength of the spiral arms, how bright they are, is different," Zari said. ![]() They then compared their analysis with previously developed models of the galaxy. In areas where they could see a higher-than-average concentration of these stars, they could assume the existence of a spiral arm. In one new paper, Zari and her colleagues looked at concentrations of hot bright blue stars, called the OBA-type stars, in the Milky Way's disc. By measuring the change in the angle between the star and Earth from two opposite points in the planet’s orbit, astronomers can calculate the distance of the star using simple trigonometry. Parallax is a star's apparent movement against the background of more distant stars as Earth revolves around the sun. That means that stars that previously we may have seen as part of the same structure now clearly belong to different structures." "And this parallax measurement is 20% better with the latest release. "We derive the distance of the stars from a measure called the parallax," Zari said. And it's this precision that is enabling astronomers to disentangle the spiral arms from the rest of the stars in the galactic disc with better precision. The latest data release, EDR3, improves the accuracy of the previous data sets. ![]() In addition to the fixed positions, the spacecraft also measures how fast stars move in three-dimensional space, allowing astronomers to model the evolution of the Milky Way in the past as well as into the future. The first two batches of data acquired by the spacecraft, which were released to the scientific community in 20, have revolutionized the study of our galaxy. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia mission has been mapping the Milky Way since 2014, measuring the precise positions and distances from Earth of nearly two billion stars. ![]()
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