{"id":240158,"date":"2026-07-02T07:06:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T12:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/xmm-newton-and-chandra-help-revise-distance-to-milky-ways-outer-spiral-arms"},"modified":"2026-07-02T07:06:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T12:06:17","slug":"xmm-newton-and-chandra-help-revise-distance-to-milky-ways-outer-spiral-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/xmm-newton-and-chandra-help-revise-distance-to-milky-ways-outer-spiral-arms","title":{"rendered":"XMM-Newton and Chandra help revise distance to Milky Way\u2019s outer spiral arms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/xmm-newton-and-chandra-help-revise-distance-to-milky-ways-outer-spiral-arms2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The European Space Agency\u2019s XMM-Newton and NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray space telescopes have spotted the aftermath of three bright explosions echoing through the outer spiral arms of our galaxy, the Milky Way. By measuring the distance to these echoes, they found the outer arms to be up to 10% farther away than previously thought.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps surprisingly, we don\u2019t know much about the structure of our galaxy\u2019s outer regions. It\u2019s difficult to observe our galaxy from the inside: The solar system is well embedded in its disk, preventing a bird\u2019s-eye view, and many regions are obscured by thick clouds of cosmic dust.<\/p>\n<p>But this is changing: We have learned a huge amount since the launch of ESA\u2019s star-surveying Gaia space telescope. Using data <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2025\/01\/Sky-scanning_complete_for_Gaia\" target=\"_blank\">collected by Gaia<\/a>, scientists are mapping the Milky Way galaxy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2025\/01\/The_best_Milky_Way_map_by_Gaia\" target=\"_blank\">in more detail than ever before<\/a> by measuring precise distances to its stars. Before Gaia, we weren\u2019t even sure whether our galaxy had two or four spiral arms (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Science_Exploration\/Space_Science\/Gaia\/Five_fascinating_Gaia_revelations_about_the_Milky_Way\" target=\"_blank\">we now know the answer to be four<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The European Space Agency\u2019s XMM-Newton and NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray space telescopes have spotted the aftermath of three bright explosions echoing through the outer spiral arms of our galaxy, the Milky Way. By measuring the distance to these echoes, they found the outer arms to be up to 10% farther away than previously thought. Perhaps surprisingly, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1965,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mapping","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}