VERDAD-BLOG: We can't see the Milky Way's woods for its trees

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We can't see the Milky Way's woods for its trees

New Scientist. Home | Opinion

28 March 2012

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YOU might be forgiven for assuming that the Milky Way, our home galaxy, holds few mysteries. But you would be wrong. There is still a huge amount we don't understand about it, from its dense centre to its sparse outskirts (see "Mysteries of the Milky Way").
Strikingly, some of these mysteries arise precisely because they are situated right on our cosmic doorstep. For example, our location makes it hard to tell where the galaxy's spiral arms lie, or even how many of them there actually are. We know the forms of far-flung galaxies much better than we do our own.
We have been here before. Geographers had to undertake globe-trotting odysseys to establish the true shape of the Earth - a quest now handled by orbiting satellites. Satellites have also revealed geological structures and archaeological sites that are all but invisible to observers on the ground, to ...
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Mysteries of the Milky Way

(Image: Luis Argerich/Getty Images)

From its furthest dark-matter-spattered reaches to the black hole at its core, Stephen Battersby explores 11 enigmas of our galaxy