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The Official Website of the State of West Virginia

Massive invisible galactic structure discovered, by accident, with Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia

7/14/2021

The astronomers at the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) discovered a massive, previously unknown structure in the Milky Way Galaxy that is quite eye opening. 

The first discovery happened with a smaller telescope but because it was so unexpected that they had to bring in the big one, the 20-meter telescope, to confirm what they were observing. 

Sometimes, in our galaxy, not everything is visible to the naked eye and that’s what is happening here. This discovery is being seen through the use of radio spectrum. Essentially, the astronomers are able to see things with the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. Since the GBT has a high level of sensitivity, it was able to detect this extremely large structure that’s made up of molecular gas, versus a physical moon or planet. Right now, the people doing the research believe the structure extends far into the distant parts of the Milky Way Galaxy. 

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