Dozens of hidden star streams found in the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy

An artist’s impression of streams of stars around a galaxy. The galaxy occupies most of the image as a fuzzy blue-white oval with spiral features extending out clockwise. The light clouds are interspersed with small dark brown splotches in the same spiral pattern around the center, representing dust clouds. The galaxy’s center is a bright yellow glow. Overlaid on top of and surrounding the galaxy are several criss-crossing, faint tendrils of stars that represent satellite dwarf galaxies and star clusters that have been stretched out into long thin lines. The tendrils have various lengths and widths, though all are arcs rather than complete circles. The background is black.

Astronomers have discovered dozens of faint ribbons of stars in the outskirts of the Milky Way using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission.

The findings were made using a new algorithm that more than quadruples the number of known candidates of these so-called "stellar streams." This discovery could offer fresh clues about how our galaxy evolved and how its dark matter is distributed, the study's researchers say.