Milky Way galaxy: Cloaked in a hot shroud?

Spacecraft observations indicate that a vast, unseen halo of hot gas envelops our home galaxy. Large enough that it literally could be brushing up against the Milky Way’s nearest galactic neighbors, the halo may be the remnants of the primordial material that built the Milky Way, researchers reported this week.

As gas clouds fall onto the Milky Way and encounter a vast corona of hot gas (light pink), oxygen atoms at the clouds’ edges heat up.