Scientists have discovered an incredible new component of the Milky Way that was previously unknown to science.
The finding was made using the VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory, which takes multiple images at different times of the central parts of the galaxy at infrared wavelengths, the European Southern Observatory reported. The telescope has discovered a wealth of new objects such as exploding stars, but this new finding could be the most important to date.
"The central bulge of the Milky Way is thought to consist of vast numbers of old stars. But the VISTA data has revealed something new -- and very young by astronomical standards!" said Istvan Dékány, lead author of the new study.
The researchers identified 655 candidate variable stars of a type called Cepheids in the Vista data. These stars expand and contract and show great variations in brightness as they do so, Brighter Cepheids generally take longer to brighten and fade than dimmer ones, and the knowledge of this phenomenon allows researchers to map the locations of objects in the distant universe. The problem is not all Cepheids are the same, but come in an older and younger class. Thirty-five of the stars in the sample were found to be a part of a sub-group called classical Cepheids, which are young and bright.
"All of the 35 classical Cepheids discovered are less than 100 million years old. The youngest Cepheid may even be only around 25 million years old, although we cannot exclude the possible presence of even younger and brighter Cepheids," said the study's second author Dante Minniti, of the Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile.
The confirmed age of these stars provides the first concrete evidence that the central region of the Milky Way has consistently produced new stars over the last 100 million years. Mapping the Cepheids also revealed a never-before-seen thin disc of young stars across the galactic bulge.
"This part of the galaxy was completely unknown until our VVV survey found it!" Minniti concluded.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
