A team led by Chris Martin at Caltech has used the Keck Cosmic Web Imager to capture the first detailed image of the gas halo surrounding a galaxy.

This “shroud” extends 100,000 light years into space and contains up to 90% of the universe’s normal matter, primarily hydrogen and helium.

The breakthrough was achieved using an ultra-faint spectrograph to observe a seemingly empty region of space around a galaxy.

The images reveal an abrupt transition between the galaxy and its halo and show glowing gas, the cause of which remains unclear, Phys.org has reported.

The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, enhance our understanding of the diffuse gas that forms the basis for stars and planets.

Written by B.C. Begley