Stars in the outer parts of the Milky Way disk may be displaced from the
Galactic plane by 4,500 light years relative to the central regions of the Galaxy.
There is an ongoing radio and optical survey of 1,000,000 million stars closest to the Earth, the
galactic plane of the Milky Way and the 100 nearest galaxies for signs of technologies deployed by advanced civilisations, also known as technosignatures.
Its center hides behind the
galactic plane in Aquila or Sagittarius.
The HESS
Galactic Plane Survey (HGPS) catalog released today, four times larger than the previous one dating from 2006, will be of great value to the entire astrophysics community, who will for the first time be able to access a very high energy gamma ray data set of this size.
However, they lie somewhat above the
Galactic Plane, leading to the conclusion that the arm must be a warped one.
The ATLASGAL survey covers more than 420 square degrees of the
galactic plane, which corresponds to 97 per cent of the inner galaxy within the solar circle.
He presented a recording of 17 hours worth of data, clearly showing the background emission from the
galactic plane with the interferometer fringes of Taurus A (M1, the 'Crab Nebula') and then, six hours later, the fringes from Virgo A, M87.
Dickinson et al., "A 33-GHz very small array survey of the
galactic plane from l = 27[degrees] to 46[degrees]" Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol.
This rare conjunction of the winter solstice Sun and the
galactic plane has prompted all manner of speculation: the end of the world, time will stand still for a moment, magnetic storms or a shift in the magnetic field of the Earth to name but a few.