
A huge hot gas halo around the Milky Way
A team of astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to find evidence that the Milky Way is wrapped in an enormous halo of gas that has a radius of at least 300,000 light years but it could be much bigger. The size of this halo is therefore so big that it includes the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two small galaxies near – of course in astronomical terms – the Milky Way.