Astronomers from the University of California, Santa Cruz have discovered and studied more than 200 distant stars located at the edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way. A sufficient number of these stars appear to be located a million light-years from the center of the galaxy, nearly half the size of our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy.

The 208 stars studied by scientists belong to the class of variable stars of the RR Lyrae type. Such stars are quite old, decreasing and increasing in brightness with a known periodicity, allowing astronomers to calculate the distance to them with fairly high accuracy.

“As part of recent work, we revised the distance to the outer limits of our galaxy,” the researchers write. “The Milky Way and Andromeda are so large that there is almost no free intergalactic space between them.”

Remember that the Milky Way galaxy consists of several parts. The first, most famous, and most beautiful part is a thin disk about 100,000 light-years across, consisting of spiral arms, one of which is the Solar System. This disk is surrounded by inner and outer halos containing the oldest stars in the galaxy.

In previous studies, the edge of the outer halo was found to be about 1 million light-years from the center of the Milky Way. According to the new data, this distance is equivalent to 1.04 million light years. It would seem that 40,000 light-years is a significant value on such scales, but the new data fully corresponds to early theoretical estimates, and therefore the results are quite significant.

The spaces of the universe are so wide that it can cause a feeling of loneliness. But now we can sleep a little more comfortably knowing that our “home” galaxy is a little larger and our nearest galactic neighbor is a little closer than we previously thought.