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Milky Way Gets Bigger

Posted by michael on from the now-30%-more-free dept.

FU_Fish writes "Australian scientists have discovered a new arm reaching out from our beloved Milky Way. The arm is 60,000 light years away from the center of the galaxy and roughly 6,500 light years thick. I guess my dream of visiting every star in our galaxy just got a bit tougher."

2 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Hubble by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So, I was just thinking. Brainstorming really. I had a thought about a real life use for moon colonization.

    Mount a telescope on the dark side of the moon.

    Shielded from the light of the sun, and mounted to a big solid object. The moon.

    Mapping the skies would be simple. Point the telescope straight out, take pictures every few minutes. Do that for a few months and you have detailed pictures of all the in a donut shaped space around you. Change angles and repeat. Although, the best you could ever do is a big donut shaped area. Straight up and straight down would be hard. But I am sure it'd be worth it.

    --
    Pretty Pictures!
  2. Visit every star in the Galaxy? by beerman2k · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hmm... Let's see...

    That's about 100 billion stars (best estimate), so if you started today, and lived another 100 years (lucky you), you'd have to visit about 1 billion stars a year. That would mean about 3 million stars a day or about 100,000 stars every hour. So you'd only have to visit about 30 stars every second. How hard could that be?