Astronomers have known for several years that the Milky Way is a barred
spiral galaxy, with a bar-like band of stars in the centre of its whirlpool. Now
a researcher in France has found a second, smaller bar, in a different
orientation.
Christophe Alard of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics made his discovery
while studying the distribution of 30 million stars as part of the American
2MASS infrared survey. In a paper submitted to Astronomy &
Astrophysics, he says: “This finding makes the Milky Way very similar to a
large number of other spiral galaxies which also have a smaller bar…
