Nearly 900 galaxies hidden behind the Milky Way

Astronomers discovered hundreds of new galaxies after using radio waves to see through the Milky Way's star system and dust.

According to Science Alert, using the Parkes radio telescope of CSIRO, Australia, astronomers discovered 883 galaxies and a third of these galaxies have never been observed before. They are located about 250 million light years from Earth. The discovery was published on February 9 in the Astrophysical Journal.

Nearly 900 galaxies are hidden in the Concealment Area after the Milky Way.(Artwork: ICRAR).

"The Milky Way is very beautiful and interesting to study, but it completely obscures the vision of farther galaxies behind it" , Lister Staveley-Smith, astronomer from the National Radio Astronomy Research Center International (ICRAR), University of Western Australia, said.

Newly discovered galaxies are in the Zone of Avoidance , the space is always hidden behind planets and stars that make up the Milky Way.

"We use a lot of different methods, but only the radio telescope allows us to see through the thickest layers of dust and stars. A galaxy contains an average of 100 billion stars, so the discovering hundreds of new galaxies hidden behind the Galaxy reveal many things we never knew , " said Renée Kraan-Korteweg, a researcher at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Hidden galaxies are located 250 million light years from Earth.(Photo: ICRAR).

The finding could help scientists explain the strange space known as the Great Attractor , located in the Concealed Area. This is an area of ​​inter-galactic space with anomalous gravity in the vicinity of the super-galaxies Truong Xa - Semi-Sagittarius (Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster). Big Suck has a gravitational force one million billion times greater than the Sun. The Milky Way and thousands of galaxies around it are being sucked towards it.

"We have not really understood the cause of the gravitational acceleration acting on the Milky Way, as well as where it originated. We only know that in this area there are many galaxies concentrated into celestial clusters. The galaxy, or galaxy cluster, and the entire Milky Way are moving toward galactic clusters at speeds of more than 2 million km / h, " Staveley-Smith said.