Stars found hidden in huge cloud wrapped around the Milky Way

A group of stars hidden in a vast stream of dust and gas that wraps around the Milky Way, which astronomers have been hunting for decades, has been found. These stars could give us clues about the history of two of the Milky Way’s closest dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which feed this ribbon of material.

Up until now, the Magellanic stream, as it is known, appeared to be devoid of stars, despite astronomers predicting …