How Heavy Is The Milky Way?
The Milky Way.Image: NASA
By combining data from the Hubble and Gaia space telescopes, an international team of astronomers has come up with the most accurate estimate yet of our galaxy’s mass. The results, set to be published in a future edition of the Astrophysical Journal (pre-print here), posits a total mass of the Milky Way at 1.5 trillion solar masses, which extends out some 129,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy. In the ESA press release, study co-author Roeland van der Marel, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, said his team was able to “pin down the Milky Way’s mass in a way that would be impossible without these two space telescopes,” so this is a good example of scientists pooling their resources to produce research that wouldn’t otherwise be achievable.
Source: gizmodo.com