Astronomers in Australia have confirmed the discovery of hundreds of galaxies hidden by the Milky Way and a gravitational anomaly known as the Great Attractor.
Until now, the galaxy-rich region of space some 250 million light-years away has been obscured by the stars and dust of the Milky Way.
"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, a professor at the University of Western Australia, said in a press release.
A new receiver installed on the Parkes radio telescope has allowed astronomers for the first time to see through the foreground fuzz of the Milky Way's starry dust and into the hidden portions of the Great Attractor region.
Previous measurements suggest the Milky Way and several hundred other galaxies are being pulled toward the Great Attractor region by a gravitational force as powerful as a million billion suns. But researchers aren't exactly sure why.
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