A team of Astronomers lead by a visiting assistant professor from Haverford College has discovered the 2 most distant stars ever observed in the Milky Way.

A team of Astronomers lead by a visiting assistant professor from Haverford College has discovered the 2 most distant stars ever observed in the Milky Way.

They’re located an astounding 775 thousand and 900 thousand light years away respectively.

As those numbers are a bit hard to wrap one’s head around, here are a couple facts that may put them into perspective.

Their distance means that the light we’re seeing now was originally emitted by the stars way back when mankind had just figured out how to make fire.

Further, the Milky Way Spiral stretches about a 100 thousand light years across.

If one were to take a picture of it from one of the new stars, it would look like a firework exploding in the sky – and one of the smaller ones at that.

And yet, the distant duo is considered part of our galaxy. How is that possible?

The lead astronomer explained, “We can calculate the distance to these stars, and have measured their velocities. We can compare that to the escape velocity of the entire Galaxy… The velocities of these stars are less than the escape velocity, so we know they are both associated with the Galaxy.”