Ever since we began our exploration of the universe, hundreds of galaxies remained hidden behind our own, the Milky Way, making it impossible for scientists to study them. Now, scientists from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research have successfully studied 883 of these galaxies for the first time ever using CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope in order to see past the stars and dust that previously blocked their view.
The region, dubbed the Great Attractor, appears to be drawing the Milky Way, along with thousands of other galaxies, towards it, and the new findings may help scientists understand the nature of this unique force, which is equivalent to a million billion Suns.
"The Milky Way is very beautiful of course and it's very interesting to study our own galaxy but it completely blocks out the view of the more distant galaxies behind it," Lister Staveley-Smith, lead author of the study, said in a press release.
Since major deviations from universe expansion were discovered back in the 1970s and 1980s, scientists have struggled to understand the mysterious Great Attractor region.
"We don't actually understand what's causing this gravitational acceleration on the Milky Way or where it's coming from," Staveley-Smith said. "We know that in this region there are a few very large collections of galaxies we call clusters or superclusters, and our whole Milky Way is moving towards them at more than two million kilometres per hour."
The new research has led to the identification of numerous new structures that could help explain this movement, including three galaxy concentrations (NW1, NW2 and NW3) and two new galaxy clusters (CW1 and CW2).
"We've used a range of techniques but only radio observations have really succeeded in allowing us to see through the thickest foreground layer of dust and stars," said Renée Kraan-Korteweg, who participated in the research.
The findings were published in the Feb. 9 issue of The Astronomical Journal.
