Size of the Milky Way

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is a beautiful spiral galaxy which seems to be larger than what was earlier imagined. Scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or RPI seem to think that the Milky Way is at least fifty time larger than what we thought based on new findings that reveal that the galactic disk is contoured into several concentric ripples.

Professor Heidi Jo Newberg was leader of the team of scientists that revisited astronomical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This was the study published in 2002 which established the presence of a bulging ring of stars beyond the known plane of the Milky Way.

Heidi Newberg said that based on the study they have found that they see at least four ripples in the disk of the Milky Way. While they can only look at part of the galaxy with this data, they assume that this pattern is going to be found throughout the disk. This means that the size of the Milky Way which was so far based on what could be seen in space, is now a faulty estimation of its actual size.

While further scientific studies will be required to check just how large the Milky Way actually is and the number of stars that truly exist in it, it is safe to say that it is larger than the size what we previously thought it was.