These 'space candle' stars help study Milky Way's empty reaches

Milky Way Galaxy is huge. So huge that even if we travel at the speed of light (300,000 kilometres per second) it would take us 100,000 years to go from one end to the other. But the visible portion of our spiral galaxy, glowing with stars is not the only part in its structure.

A little away from the star-rich centre and even spiral arms of the galaxy, it is enclosed in what is called galactic stellar halo which is much bigger than the galaxy and another 100,000 light-years across. The study of the galactic halo is difficult because it hardly has any stars and is also made up of dark matter.

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(Image: NASA)

Scientists were studying something else and accidentally stumbled upon some stars located in the halo. Discovery of these stars is sure to help us study the vast space sparsely illuminated by stars

The stars that have been discovered are RR Lyrae variables. They orbit our galaxy through the galactic halo and are 1 million light-years away from the centre of the galaxy.

These stars are interesting to study. But what scientists have found handy is that their use as 'space candles' to determine distances and to find out more stars, if any, in the lonesome stellar halo part outside our galaxy.

"This study is redefining what constitutes the outer limits of our galaxy," said Astronomer Raja GuhaThakurta of the University of California Santa Cruz

"[It] and Andromeda are both so big, there's hardly any space between the two galaxies."

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