Science / Medicine : Star May Give Hint of Galaxy Mass

Astronomers have spotted the most distant known star in the Milky Way and say the accidental discovery could help determine the total mass of the galaxy. That includes mysterious invisible, or dark, matter that astronomers know exists but are unable to identify, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute said last week.

The scientists stumbled upon the star while studying a distant galaxy. The star is 160,000 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Virgo.

“It was just dumb luck that this star was in the way of what they were looking at. It was totally serendipitous,” said Ray Villard, a spokesman for the institute. “It just shows that there are a lot of wonderful surprises out there that we may stumble upon when we’re looking for something else.”

“Astronomers suspect that there is a lot of additional material surrounding our galaxy that doesn’t give off light,” said Howard Bond, who along with two others discovered the distant star last spring.

Astronomers theorize that the galaxy’s dark matter could be dim stars that are too faint to be seen, black hole remnants of massive stars that exploded early in the galaxy’s history or some unknown type of subatomic particle, Bond said.