According to current estimates, there are up to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way alone. As is well known, our home solar system is also part of these fascinating barred spiral galaxies.

How gigantic the dimensions of our galactic home are in reality becomes clear to us if we conceptualize the confusing accumulation of thousands and thousands of celestial bodies as an earthly snowdrift. In an area with a diameter of 6 miles and an average height of just over half a mile, our sun, which generally appears to us as a colossal celestial body, would not even be the size of a microscopically small virus.

In view of these mind-boggling dimensions difficult for our human mind to grasp, it is practically in the nature of things that the Milky Way still hides innumerable secrets yet to be deciphered. With every new discovery we make within our home galaxy, we add another important piece of the mosaic that is the galactic picture.

In the course of their research, however, experts are repeatedly confronted with puzzling structures and conditions that cannot initially be placed in an explicable context. Now we’ll tell you which discoveries in the Milky Way leave not only the renowned experts agog!