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Astronomers have accidentally discovered the first known intergalactic path of stars. The giant “star stream”, which is about 10 times longer than the “star stream”. milky wayA new study suggests that more such structures could be lurking in deep space.
Stellar streams are elongated strings of gravitationally entangled stars that have likely been yanked away from parent galaxies or nebulae by the gravitational pull of other nearby galaxies. Scientists have Set dozens of these flows Within galaxies, including the Milky Way. But so far, nothing has been discovered in intergalactic space, that is, the space between galaxies.
In the study published November 30 in the journal Astronomy and astrophysicsresearchers have identified and mapped the first-ever intergalactic stellar stream, which extends through the galaxy Coma groupAlso known as Abell 1656, it is a group of more than 1,000 small galaxies located about 321 million light-years from Earth. The researchers named the first-of-its-kind structure the Giant Coma Stream, so named because it is also the largest stellar stream ever found.
“This giant stream crossed our path by chance,” says the study’s lead author Javier RomanThe astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics in the Canary Islands, said in A statement. The team was initially studying the scattered star halos around the Coma cluster, trying to measure its size Dark matter That surrounded the galaxy cluster, when they encountered the star trail.
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Co-author of the study R. Michael RichAn astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, made the first observations of the giant coma stream using his personal telescope. The team then turned to the more powerful William Herschel Telescope, located at La Palma in Spain’s Canary Islands, to properly study the current.
Researchers were surprised to find a stellar stream lurking within the galaxy cluster. The structure is “a rather fragile structure amidst a hostile environment of galaxies that mutually attract and repel each other,” says the study’s co-author. Reinier PelletierThe astronomer at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands said in the statement. Normally, something like this would be expected to be torn apart by more massive galaxies, he added.
The team isn’t sure how the stellar stream continues and grows so large, but one explanation may be the elusive substance they were originally looking for — dark matter. While this mysterious entity makes up most of the matter in the universe, it is effectively invisible and can only be detected through gravitational interactions with visible matter. The team said it was possible that dark matter lurking within the galaxy cluster helped extend the stellar stream into its current form.
The researchers plan to study the stream using more powerful telescopes to learn more about the mysterious structure and its origins. They also hope to analyze individual stars within the stream to see if they are unique in any way.
The discovery of the giant Coma Stream also opens the door to the discovery of more intergalactic stellar streams. The researchers believe there could be many more of these streams, and they hope that increasingly advanced telescopes, along with their findings, will help other astronomers find more of these stellar streams.
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