The
Colour of the Milky Way
Astronomers have determined exactly what colour our home
galaxy the Milky Way is, and find it is aptly named. A comparison of star types
in other galaxies gives perhaps an unsurprising result: white. But not just any
white - specifically, like spring snow at an hour after sunrise or before
sunset. The finding was announced at the 219th American Astronomical Society
meeting.
"For astronomers, one of the most important parameters
is actually the colour of the galaxy," Jeffrey Newman of the
So Prof Newman and his student Tim Licquia
gathered data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with information on about a
million other galaxies. They compared those data with what they knew about the
total mass in the Milky Way, as well as the rate of star formation, looking for
near matches among other galaxies. For those most nearly matched to our own
galactic home, the team took an average and came up with a precise measure of
what colour it must be.
"The best description I can give would be that if you
looked at new spring snow, which has a fine grain size, about an hour after
dawn or an hour before sunset, you'd see the same spectrum of light that an
alien astronomer in another galaxy would see looking at the Milky Way,"
Prof Newman told BBC News. This "colour temperature" is somewhere
between that of an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb and noon-time
sunlight; both whites, but subtly different.
And what does the colour tell us about our Milky Way's
development - is it a cosmic newcomer or past its prime? "It appears our
Milky Way is on the road between those two stages - based on the colour we
find, the rate of formation of stars has been declining over time," Prof
Newman said. "The Milky way is in a very interesting evolutionary state
right now."
By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News
12 January 2012 Last updated
at 08:06 GMT