The researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky survey have reported most detailed look at the warp of our home melkweg
Meestal denk je aan een spiraal sterrenstelsels as a flat disc rotating around its centre but about 60-70% of the spiral galaxies including our home melkweg Milky Way have discs with a slight warp or twist.
Er was niet veel bekend over de warp of twist in ons huis melkweg vanwege de positie van het zonnestelsel in de Melkweg
De onderzoekers van de Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), een consortium van verschillende onderzoeksorganisaties die zich toeleggen op het creëren van de meest gedetailleerde driedimensionale kaarten van de Universum, after carefully studying the positions and motions of sterren all over the Milky Way have traced out the warp. They have reported findings that the Milky Way’s disc is warped and the wrap travels around the melkweg eens in de 440 miljoen jaar.
The analysis showed that the twist or the warp is caused by the ripple or the wave travelling through the Milky Way causing individual sterren to move up and down. The twist or the warp is continuing gravitational ripple passing through the melkweg caused most likely due to interaction with the satellite melkweg ongeveer 3 miljard jaar geleden.
Interestingly, our home melkweg Milky Way is expected to collide with the Andromeda galaxy in about 4 billion years from now when both the galaxies will merge with each other.
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Bronnen:
De Sloan Digital Sky Survey 2021. Persbericht - De Melkweg doet de golf. Gepubliceerd 15 januari 2021. Online beschikbaar op https://www.sdss.org/press-releases/the-milky-way-does-the-wave/
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