Starship Asterisk*

3D view of the two clouds in which we mapped the magnetic field and their location in the Milky Way galaxy. The orange arrow shows the sight line where the two clouds are observed. Credit: Aris Tritsis and colleagues, Space Nebula Plugin for Unreal Engine 4, Fabian Fuchs & Linus Fuchs.

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A new study led by The Australian National University (ANU) has created a 3D map of the magnetic field in a small wedge of the Milky Way galaxy, paving the way for future discoveries that will improve our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Universe.

Lead researcher Dr Aris Tritsis from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RSAA) said this was the first study to tomographically measure the strength of our galaxy’s magnetic field.

“Our work paves the way for future discoveries regarding the evolution of the Milky Way, the formation of stars and planets and the early stages of our universe,” said Dr. Tritsis, who collaborated with RSAA colleague Associate Professor Federrath and Associate Professor Vasiliki Pavlidou from the University of Crete.

The galaxy’s magnetic field and cosmic dust act like a veil that obscures the radiation from the early stages of our universe -- known as cosmic microwave background -- and have prevented scientists from testing cosmological models for the universe’s evolution. ...

• Astrophysical Journal 873(1):38 (2019 Mar 01) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab037d
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1810.00231 > 29 Sep 2018