Astronomers have created the most precise map to date of the Milky Way by tracking thousands of big pulsating stars spread throughout the galaxy, demonstrating that its disk of myriad stars is not flat but dramatically warped and twisted in shape.
The researchers on Thursday unveiled a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way — home to more than 100 billion stars, including our sun — providing a comprehensive chart of its structure: a stellar disk comprising four major spiral arms and a bar-shaped core region.
"For the first time, our whole galaxy — from edge to edge of the disk — was mapped using real, precise distances," said University of Warsaw astronomer Andrzej Udalski, co-author of the study published in the journal Science.