83
Astronomers Find the Edge of the Milky Way
(skyandtelescope.org)
Flat earthers vindicated.
Okay, that's cool!
Like surfers carried to the shore, these stars were caught in the spiral waves of our swirling galaxy, which carried them outward and dumped them in the outer regions of the Milky Way. Naturally, it takes longer for them to travel farther, so the outermost stars are also the oldest.
Funny, that's not what the graph is showing, by my interpretation. To me or looks like the innermost stars are the oldest. Then the mid stars are the youngest, then outermost are older again but not the oldest.
so the outermost stars are also the oldest.
I don't think that line necessarily refers to anything going on in the core, but rather "of stars on the outside, the furthest ones are the oldest".
I'm not sure I follow you here, but just to be sure, I'm talking about this image here:
Was that also what you were looking at?
Yeah. And the oldest stars overall are indeed in the galactic centre.
But the specific bit you quoted I read as "of the old stars on the outside, the outermost are the oldest".
Ah okay, I get you. Reading it back again it does indeed seem to be that this is what they mean.
Thanks. ๐
That's wild. Finding the edge by finding an inversion in age of stars. I read that just trying to figure out how they can tell how old a star is in the first place.
One of the ways they used in this study was isochrone fitting, where you compare the evolution of stars in a cluster to figure out their age
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
83 points (100.0% liked)
World News
2047 readers
833 users here now
Rules:
Be a decent person.
No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, zionism/nazism, and so on.
Other Great Communities:
Rules
Be excellent to each other
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS