Our Milky Way galaxy has four spiral arms, a 12-year study of massive stars has confirmed. The study ends years of debate sparked by images taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope that only showed two arms of the galaxy.
The new research is part of the Red MSX Source (RMS) Survey, launched by academics at the University of leeds. “The Milky Way is our galactic home and studying its structure gives us a unique opportunity to understand how a very typical spiral galaxy works in terms of where stars are born and why,” said Professor Melvin Hoare, a member of the RMS Survey Team in the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of leeds and a co-author of the research paper.
In the 1950s astronomers used radio telescopes to map our Galaxy. They focused on clouds of gas in the Milky Way in which new stars are born, revealing four major arms.