Found! Most Distant Stars in the Milky Way Galaxy!

I came across this little tid-bit of information and I think it will be good to some of the ATS crowd. UK scientists with the help of telescopes in Arizona, Hawaii, and various other places, have discovered the farthest galaxies in the Milky Way to date at a distance of 775,000 and 900,000 light years respectively. Just to give some insight into how far this truly is, the speed of light is:

299,792,458 metres per second,

186,000 miles per second

, or about

671 million miles per hour

.

en.wikipedia.org...

Not trying to insult anyone's intelligence..There are some smart cookies here on ATS. Just want to give some perspective into how far these two Stars really are.

Astronomers have discovered the farthest-flung stars yet known in the Milky Way. The two objects — known as ULAS J0744+25 and ULAS J0015+01 — are about 775,000 and 900,000 light-years from Earth, respectively, making them both about five times more distant than a satellite galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.

"The distances to these two stars are almost too large to comprehend," study lead author John Bochanski, of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, said in a statement. "To put it in perspective, when the light from ULAS J0015+01 left the star, our early human ancestors were just starting to make fires here on Earth."

The distances in Space are mind boggling and we haven't even made it to our planet next door after more than 50 years. Anyway, enjoy this information and imagine the possibilities for Space exploration.

www.space.com...

When we detect something farther than 13.8 billion years, now that will be an interesting day for science!
S&F -Love this stuff. Cool story,

originally posted by: lostbook
have discovered the farthest galaxies in the Milky Way to date at a distance of 775,000 and 900,000 light years respectively.

That's not what the article says, it says they found the furthest stars, not the furthest galaxies, but your typo is a clue to the problem I have with the claim, which is, how do they know the stars aren't part of satellite galaxies of the Milky way? For example look at this view of the Milky way and Andromeda and their satellite galaxies:

astrobob.areavoices.com...

The Milky Way fares well in the neighborhood “Local Group” cluster of galaxies. It and Andromeda are the largest of its approximately 54 members. Credit: Andrew Colvin

With 54 galaxies in the local group, how do they know they've got the right galaxy, especially at such a distance from the Milky Way? Why couldn't they belong to one of the other 53 galaxies in the local group?

For comparison the distance from the Milky Way to Andromeda is about 2 million light years so the distant stars they found are a little under half that (0.9 million light years), so it would be almost halfway to Andromeda in this illustration, if it was in that direction (though the article doesn't say it is, I'm just noting that for scale purposes).

Look at all the satellite galaxies, and tell me how they know it's not part of a satellite galaxy? With about 54 galaxies in the local group there's more than one possibility, right?

originally posted by: canucks555
When we detect something farther than 13.8 billion years, now that will be an interesting day for science!
S&F -Love this stuff. Cool story,

The cosmic microwave background is about 45 billion light years away and we've detected that:

Observable Universe

the comoving distance (current proper distance) to particles from the CMBR, which represent the radius of the visible universe, is about 14.0 billion parsecs (about 45.7 billion light years), while the comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light years),

edit on 11-7-2014 by Arbitrageur because: clarification

Wait, the observable universe is only 13.8 billion light years in all directions.....
our galaxy is but a speck in countless galaxies yet only 30000 of our galaxies end for end would span the universe??

That makes the universe seem small.

edit oh wait, someone posted its parsecs not light years.....multiply by a factor of 3 then, still seems small.

a reply to: TinfoilTP

Unless I got it all wrong, read that diameter of universe is something like 93 billion light years so we cannot see big bang as expansion is faster than speed of light.

Just to mention that Universe is most likely much older than 13,8 billion years. In fact it could be more than 15 billion years old, as there are stars that are simply too old, like HD 140283 (Methuselah). Methuselah is estimated to be 14,46 billion years old, so how star could be older than universe? Even second oldest known star HE 1523-0901 is 13,2 billion years old, which is very early if The Big Bang happened 13,8 billion years ago, as its second generation star.

Thought there could be errors in measuring star ages.

EDIT: There is also another very old star discovered in 2014, called SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 (That's a long designation). Its about 13,6 billion years old.

All of this make it seem very unlikely we will ever meet any neighbors. Even if we are a million years older or younger in either direction we wouldn't meet them. If they are a billion, or 10 billion. Daaaaaaang. Entire civilizations could have been born and died before we were even born, or our planet was even born.

Imagine another billion years in the future. That's a long time. Sweet sci-fi and internet speeds though I bet. Glad we made that time capsule in 1st grade back in '86 yo!

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I came across this little tid-bit of information and I think it will be good to some of the ATS crowd. UK scientists with the help of telescopes in Arizona, Hawaii, and various other places, have discovered the farthest galaxies in the Milky Way to date at a distance of 775,000 and 900,000 light years respectively. Just to give some insight into how far this truly is, the speed of light is:

Good catch. Yes, it should say farthest Stars not Galaxies. It was late when I wrote this thread so I suppose not all of my facilities were intact.

originally posted by: TinfoilTP
Wait, the observable universe is only 13.8 billion light years in all directions.....

our galaxy is but a speck in countless galaxies yet only 30000 of our galaxies end for end would span the universe??

Actually, the observable universe has a radius of 46.5 billion light years in all directions. That's because during the inflationary period, space was expanding faster than light.

originally posted by: lostbook

UK scientists, have discovered the farthest galaxies in the Milky Way to date at a distance of 775,000 and 900,000 light years



Astronomers have discovered the farthest-flung stars yet known in the Milky Way. The two objects — known as ULAS J0744+25 and ULAS J0015+01 — are about 775,000 and 900,000 light-years from Earth, respectively,

That is Amazing...considering that Astronomers/Scientists are pretty well in agreement the MilkyWay is only around 100,000 LY in diameter ...


search source:

The stellar disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter, and is considered to be, on average, about 1,000 light years thick. A very thin, wide disk!

if those Stars are outside the Galaxy Disk, Spiral Arm structure... then they are rogue Stars in the space between Galaxies



the author of the news item is confused or the Scientists made an error in identification ... the two objects cannot be 800,000 light years outside the Milky Way Galaxy and be part of the galaxy..

ergo the two Stars are inter galactic stars not inter stellar stars


ADD: ok finally read the piece... the objects are in the theorized 'halo' of the infant milky way galaxy...

I suggest that these Stars were stripped off of colliding Galaxies which were absorbed by the milky way and were never Stars that formed in a Galactic sized accretion disk

originally posted by: lostbook
The distances in Space are mind boggling and we haven't even made it to our planet next door after more than 50 years.

But we might in the next 50 years. Chances are, plenty of people, perhaps you or your kids will be alive when the first probe is sent to Alpha Centauri.

Excerpt

In 2011, Geoff Marcy proposed a robotic mission to Alpha Centauri by the end of this century, as a way to focus high technology efforts at NASA and to serve as an inspiration for the next generation. It is a daunting challenge. To prepare for such a mission, an Exoplanet Exploration division could fund pioneer interstellar missions that could begin sometime in the 2020s. In fact, a group of engineers, affiliated with The Planetary Society, has already proposed a roadmap of increasingly capable interstellar pathfinders utilizing the technique of solar sailing (see “Mind Expansion”, The Space Review, November 21, 2011; “Stepping Lightly to the Stars,” The Planetary Report, March 2012). Both The Planetary Society and NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist are working on projects to test fly these sails. Crewed “world ships” may come someday, but in the meantime, a robotic interstellar pioneer can be launched with technology that is available today, or will soon be within reach.

As we review these exoplanet missions, it is good to keep in mind the daunting challenges involved in detecting, let alone traveling to, planet-sized objects at interstellar distances. If our solar system was shrunk down in size so that the distance from the Earth to the Sun was 1 foot (30 centimeters), then the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, nearly 4.4 light-years, would be more than 52 miles (85 kilometers) away. These interstellar pioneers could use a closer target as their first milestone. At a distance of only 500–600 AU lies a virtual sphere around the Sun at which visible light is magnified by the bending of space caused by the gravity of the Sun, per Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This is the same principle that is used in microlensing. In this case the Sun’s gravity acts as a lens that provides an astonishing degree of magnification. Theoretically, with a space telescope at 550 AU, one could image fine details on nearby exoplanets. For example, at the distance of Alpha Centauri, the resolution would be an almost unimaginable one meter! In addition, the spacecraft need not stop at 550 AU since the virtual lens begins at that distance and continues outward.

Wow...just wow. I was thinking the same thing when it stated that they are still in the Milky Way. Regardless I don't get why we care about objects that far away. Focus on the objects close by and in our surrounding neighborhood. That'll likely give us a very good explanation of what we have out there.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
With 54 galaxies in the local group, how do they know they've got the right galaxy, especially at such a distance from the Milky Way? Why couldn't they belong to one of the other 53 galaxies in the local group?

The stars' coordinates might be outside any of the known Local Cluster galaxies.

Perhaps much confusion and doubt can be avoided if the emphasis is made on the fact that we're talking about stars in the Milky Way's outer halo, not in the galaxy (the way we normally visualise it) itself.

From the horse's mouth: www.skyandtelescope.com...

We began by targeting stars in the Milky Way’s outer halo, which is a sparse shroud of stars that surrounds the disk of our galaxy and stretches at least 500,000 light-years out from the Milky Way’s center.

These stars might be remnants of smaller galaxies that got "eaten" by the Milky Way.

I'll try to get the precise coordinates for those stars, and see if they are anywhere near other galaxies.

[Edit] Here are those stars in sky-map.com

ULAS J0015+01 RA00 15 35.72, DEC+01 55 49.6
ULAS J0744+25 RA07 44 17.48, DEC+25 32 33.0

Have a look and tell me they are anywhere near Milky Way's satellite galaxies. I'm sure those stars wouldn't be visible or resolvable if they belonged to other galaxies in the Local Group.

I bet there is a fantastic view of the milky way from a planet near either of those two suns, lucky beings!

a reply to: wildespace
Let me share my line of thinking here. One way to confirm an orbit is to observe the orbiting object. The more of the orbit is observed, the more the confidence in the orbit goes up. But for something 900,000 light years from us or the Milky way, the distant orbit might mean that you'd have to observe the object for a very long time to determine the orbit, or which galaxy it's orbiting. I'm thinking this might take longer than a human life span.

Even if there are no other galaxies closer to the stars (which I think is unlikely), then there's still a possibility they could be rogue stars, isn't there?

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
a reply to: wildespace
Let me share my line of thinking here. One way to confirm an orbit is to observe the orbiting object. The more of the orbit is observed, the more the confidence in the orbit goes up. But for something 900,000 light years from us or the Milky way, the distant orbit might mean that you'd have to observe the object for a very long time to determine the orbit, or which galaxy it's orbiting. I'm thinking this might take longer than a human life span.

Even if there are no other galaxies closer to the stars (which I think is unlikely), then there's still a possibility they could be rogue stars, isn't there?

Thanks for your input. Please see my updated post above, with precise coordinates.

The actual science paper at iopscience.iop.org... gives more leeway:

Using their distances and kinematics, we considered possible origins such as: tidal stripping from a dwarf galaxy, ejection from the MW's disk, or membership in an undetected dwarf galaxy.

These are professional astronomers, I'm sure they would have included the possibility of those star belonging to a known galaxy other than the Milky Way.

P.S. some more insight from the author of the paper:

They are likely bound to the Milky Way. They are moving away from the Galaxy at speeds much lower than the escape velocity of the Galaxy. And you are correct, their orbital periods are very, very long. It took them at least a 1 billion years to get where they are now (if they formed in the disk).