Astronomers were able to measure the distance between the Milky Way and its neighbouring galaxy accurately for the first time and found it to be only 163,000 light-years away.
Using binary stars as a standard for reference, scientists were able to measure the distance between the Milky Way and its neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), accurately for the first time. They were surprised to find that the distance between the two was only 163,000 light-years apart.
"I am very excited because astronomers have been trying for a hundred years to accurately measure the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud, and it has proved to be extremely difficult," said Wolfgang Gieren from Universidad de Concepcion, Chile and one of the leaders of the team in an ESO (European Organisation for Astronomical Research) statement. "Now we have solved this problem by demonstrably having a result accurate to 2 percent."
This new discovery comes as a major achievement for scientists as it enhances their knowledge of the rate of expansion of the Universe - the Hubble Constant. It is also a crucial step toward understanding the nature of the mysterious dark energy that is causing the expansion to accelerate.
"We are working to improve our method still further and hope to have a one percent LMC distance in a very few years from now," said Dariusz Graczyk of Warsaw University Observatory. "This has far-reaching consequences not only for cosmology, but for many fields of astrophysics."
