•
Astronomers Confirm Milky Way’s Most Distant Stellar Stream
The central disk of our Milky Way galaxy with the Gemini stellar stream highlighted in the top right of the image. Credit: Andrew Drake/Axel Mellinger
A stream of at least 150 ancient variable stars has been confirmed to extend some 130,000 light years beyond our own galaxy’s stellar halo — on the fringes of the Intergalactic Medium, where aside from hot gas and dark matter, space-time becomes as sparse as the deep Sahara. The confirmation, based on analysis of 10 billion year-old dying RR Lyrae stars in the Gemini constellation, was done by an international team of astronomers, including CACR scientist Andrew Drake, who report their findings in The Astrophysical Journal.