The Milky Way’s Halo

The Milky Way’s Halo:

An artist concept of a halo of gas existing around the Milky Way, large enough to engulf our two small neighbor galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; NASA/CXC/Ohio State/A Gupta et al

What’s going on with the Chandra X-ray telescope these days you ask. Glad you asked!
Chandra is still busy doing science, if fact it has shown evidence that the Milky Way is surrounded by a halo of hot gas.
Other studies have also shown the Milky Way and other galaxies are nestled inside hot gas envelopes or halos. This time around, and long with Chandra a team of astronomers also used ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory and the Japanese Suzaku satellite to set boundaries on the temperature, extent and mass of the halo.
Chandra was used to estimate the mass of the halo and it is comparable to the sum of all the mass of all the stars in the Milky Way. The size and mass of the halo has to be confirmed, and if it is, the “missing-baryon” conundrum could be solved. How cool is that!
Before I confuse both of us on the specifics check out the press release from Chandra.