STREAMS of 鈥渞ebel鈥� stars are moving in and out from the centre of our galaxy rather than in circular orbits.
Most stars in the Milky Way鈥檚 five main spiral arms take nearly circular paths around the galactic centre. The sun, midway down one arm, takes about 100 million years to complete one orbit.
Now a team led by Benoit Famaey of the Free University of Brussels (ULB), Belgium, has found a fifth of the stars within 1000 light years of the sun taking more elongated routes. The stars vary greatly in age, suggesting that they have different origins. The team says the stars got funnelled into coherent streams when they were deflected by a dense spiral arm. The research will appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Advertisement