Huge extragalactic structure found hiding behind the Milky Way

Bob Yirka is a research scientist at Phys.org.

There is evidence of a large extragalactic assembly behind the part of the Milky Way that is not visible to the naked eye. A paper about their findings on the arXiv preprint server has been published.

Space scientists have known for a while that there is a part of the night sky that is mostly obscured from view. It's known as the "zone of avoidance" and makes up 10% of the sky. The zone has not been well studied because it doesn't offer much to work with. The researchers used a variety of tools to get a better understanding of what might be hidden.

Scientists have used various tools to investigate the zone of avoidance. The researchers gathered all of the data that has been collected so far and added more using information recently obtained from the VVV Survey.

The European Organization for Astronomy Research in the Southern Hemisphere sponsors the VVV Survey. Multiple state-of- the-art research facilities are located at multiple sites. The survey has been involved in the study of the stars. Emissions from the stars in the bulge can be passed on to instruments on Earth.

The researchers found that they were able to identify several distant galaxies. The researchers think that they make up what they call a massive extragalactic structure because of their numbers. There could be as many as 58 galaxies in the structure.

There is a new structure behind the stars. There is a book titled "arxiv.2210.16332."

Journal information: Astronomy & Astrophysics , arXiv

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