• There’s a great wave rippling through our galaxy byJulie Kiel Holm| Feb 20, 2026 |Daily Paper Summaries|1 comment Title:The great wave - Evidence of a large-scale vertical corrugation propagating outwards in the Galactic disc Authors:E. • Thulasidharan First Author’s Institution:INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, via Osservatorio 20, 10025 Pino Torinese (TO), Italy, and Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange, France Status:Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics [openaccess] When you look up at the night sky, the Milky Way seems to spread out like a straight band across the celestial dome. • The shape and motions within our galaxy are not as easily described. • They are affected by a plethora of physical mechanisms - and a new one just entered the chat! • The Milky Way is aspiral galaxy,meaning that the stars and gas in the disk are concentrated in spiral arms which wrap around the centre. • In addition to the overall rotation of the disk, these arms move like spirallingdensity wavesthrough the gas and stars, compressing and decompressing the material as they pass.

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  • Authors: E. Poggio, S. Khanna, R. Drimmel, E. Zari, E. D’Onghia, M. G. Lattanzi, P. A. Palicio, A. Recio-Blanco and L. Thulasidharan First Author’s Institution: INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, via Osservatorio 20, 10025 Pino Torinese (TO), Italy, and Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange, France Status: Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics [open access] When you look up at the night sky, the Milky Way seems to spread out like a straight band across the celestial dome. The shape and motions within our galaxy are not as easily described. T

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