In the halo of stars that mark the outer boundary of the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have discovered a star cluster farther from Earth than any known in our own galaxy.

Astronomers Discover Milky Way Galaxy's Most-Distant Stars:-

The researchers said these 208 stars live in the extreme parts of the Milky Way's halo. A globular nebula dominated by an invisible and mysterious substance called dark matter, identifiable only by its gravitational influence. The farthest is 1.08 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
Discovered by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, these stars belong to a category of stars called RR Lyrae, are relatively small in mass, and are usually rich in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. just a little. The most distant one appears to be about 70% of the Sun's mass. Other stars in the Milky Way more distant than this star have not been measured with certainty. The star at the edge of the Galactic Hall can be seen as the lone star of a smaller galaxy that later collided with the larger Milky Way.
"Our interpretation of the origin of these distant stars is that they most likely formed in the halo of dwarf galaxies and star clusters and later merged with the Milky Way." The University of California, Santa Cruz Yuting Feng, an astronomy graduate student who led the study, said he presented it at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle this week.
"The host galaxy is being crushed and engulfed by gravity, but the stars at that distance will remain after the merger," he added.
The Milky Way grew with such catastrophes.
"Bigger galaxies eat and grow on smaller galaxies, which means they eat and grow on the same type of galaxy," says a co-author of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. increase. gain. . "With a central supermassive black hole about 26,000 light-years from Earth, this galaxy contains between 100 billion and 4,000 million galaxies, including the four that make up the disk of the Milky Way," said Raja Guhathakurta, chairman of the Science Committee. It may contain billions of stars, including the Sun, which is in one of the major spiral arms, and the halo contains about 5% of the stars in our galaxy.
Dark matter, which dominates the halo, is thought to be responsible for much of the mass and the basic structure of the universe, as well as the gravitational influence on the visible matter that makes up stars and galaxies. I'm here. to win.
The edge of the halo itself is a largely unexplored region of the galaxy. These newly confirmed stars are nearly half the distance from the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.
"You can see that the Andromeda halo and the Milky Way halo are actually almost 'back to back,'" Feng said.