[madameshawshank]

A few years back we spent time at Alice Springs and surrounds...how well I remember the dinner in the seeming middle of nowhere..that night sky! a telescope to use....the young astronomer sharing her knowledge with us...the audible gasps ....Wonderment

from The New York Times:

WASHINGTON: A previously unrecognised galaxy appears to be merging with the Milky Way, bringing hundreds of thousands of stars into our home galaxy that no one has noticed until now.

Astronomers said a survey of the northern sky has detected a huge structure within the Milky Way that does not seem to fit in with other parts of the galaxy.

Robert Lupton, of Princeton University, told a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Monday that the faint collection of stars rises almost perpendicular to the flat spiral of the Milky Way. The most likely interpretation of the structure, he said, is that it is a dwarf galaxy merging with our our own.

The dwarf galaxy lies in the direction of the constellation Virgo, 30,000 light years from Earth.

At the same meeting, another group of researchers said they had an explanation for a mysterious warp in the Milky Way. Satellite galaxies, known as the Magellanic Clouds, cause vibrations as they pass though the edges of our galaxy, they said
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"I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us." - James Gleeson