Date: 04/04/2023 Shift: Q. No: 96

If our school textbook pictures are a reference, then it’s kind of flat. Now astronomers have mapped the galaxy all of billion stars and more using real, precise distances, and its shape is warped. Until now, the understanding of the galaxy’s shape, says a Reuters report, had been based upon indirect measurements of celestial landmarks within the Milky Way.

The new map was formulated using precise measurements of the distance from the sun to two thousand and four hundred stars called Cepheid variables scattered throughout the galaxy. The astronomers tracked the Cepheids using the Warsaw Telescope located in the Chilean Andes. These young stars are hundred to ten thousand times more luminous than the sun, pulsate at regular intervals and can be seen through the immense clouds of interstellar dust.

Once the scientists mapped the galaxy, they found its disk is far from flat, instead is warped and varies in thickness from place to place, with increasing thickness measured further from the galactic center. The disk boasts a diameter of about fourteen thousand light years. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, and is nearly nine trillion kilometres.