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The Milky Way's Mass is Much Lower Than We Thought

How massive is the Milky Way? According to a new study using data from ESA's Gaia spacecraft, less than we thought. A new estimate puts the Milky Way's mass at 200 billion times the mass of the Sun, which is 4-5 times less than previous estimates that pegged it closer to a trillion solar masses. Using detailed information about millions of stars, astronomers were able to build an extremely accurate rotation curve for the Milky Way and use that to estimate its mass. They found that the rotation of the Milky Way isn't typical for large spiral galaxies, decreasing its estimated mass.

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