Most unusual portrait of the Milky Way: mapping the Galaxy with neutrinos (2023)
nature.com
nature.com
> A vast telescope buried beneath Antarctica has captured high-energy neutrinos from the Galactic Centre, ushering in a new era for observing the Universe.
> In June, researchers released what might be the most unusual portrait of the Milky Way yet. For the first time, astronomers have charted our Galaxy using something other than light rays — a finding that heralds a new way of studying what goes on in the busy centre of the Milky Way.
> The data came from the IceCube observatory at the South Pole, which detects neutrinos, the lightest, most pervasive of the Universe’s elementary particles. The observatory is a vast array of 5,160 sensors, buried more than 1.5 kilometres below the surface of the ice sheet. Over the course of ten years, the array detected neutrinos one at a time and measured the direction they came from, which allowed researchers to chart their origin to the centre of the Milky Way.
> The first neutrino map of our Galaxy is a milestone for the nascent field of neutrino astronomy, say researchers. And it’s just the start. Construction is under way on several neutrino-detecting arrays, at sites from the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia.