Science is stretching astronomy beyond Earth's orbit, and now scientists have found the farthest distant star in the Milky Way galaxy. More than 200 of these distant celestial objects designated as RR Lyrae stars have been discovered in the stellar fringe of the galaxy.

Old stars known as RR Lyrae have extremely unique physical properties that cause them to grow and shrink in a cycle that repeats itself. The characteristic pulsations of an RR Lyrae star can be used to identify it, and the star's apparent luminance can be used to determine its distance from Earth.

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The stars in the stellar halo are farther distant from Earth than any other stars in our galaxy, stretching almost halfway to Andromeda. It's a depiction of the Milky Way's outermost regions. 

Because the star that is the farthest from Earth is approximately a million light-years away, the energy that departs the sun today would approach this galaxy a million years later. The Andromeda galaxy, which is the closest galaxy to Earth, is 2.5 million light-years away.

According to co-author Raja GuhaThakurta, a researcher of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, 'this work redefines what comprises the outer edges of our galaxy.' There is hardly any room between Andromeda and our galaxy because both of them are so massive.

These stars are members of the class of stars known as RR Lyrae, which are relatively low-mass stars with limited species richness of particles larger than hydrogen and helium. They were discovered by using Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea mountain.

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The most distant one seems to be almost 70% the mass of our sun. These Milky Way stars are the furthest away that have been accurately measured.

Born With Haloes

The stars that make up the galactic halo's periphery can be thought of as stellar orphans; they likely came from tiny planets which subsequently collided with the bigger Milky Way.

Yuting Feng, an astronomy doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, led the study and presented it this week at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. 

'Our perception about beginnings of the these distant stars is that they are most likely born in the halos of dwarf galaxies and star clusters which were later merged - or more simply, cannibalised - by the Milky Way,' she said.

Although their home universes have been gravitationally destroyed and eaten, these stars are still present at such a great distance as merger event debris.