An international team of astronomers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the University of La Laguna in Spain has discovered a huge intergalactic “river” of stars called the Giant Coma Stream. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A).
According to experts, this is the largest structure of its kind to date and the first time such a flow occurs between galaxies. The length of the Giant Scatter Stream is ten times the length of our Milky Way galaxy.
The name of the object is associated with the Coma Cluster, one of the most studied galactic clusters. It contains thousands of galaxies and is located approximately 300 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices.
The discovery of the Giant Coma Stream is notable because it is a highly fragile structure amidst the hostile environment of galaxies that attract and repel each other, scientists said.
Using large telescopes, researchers hope to study this flow in more detail in the future and discover other similar stellar “rivers.”
Previously, astronomers for the first time discovered Stars in the Magellanic Stream, a gas belt between the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies.