While aiming for massive gas cloud, astronomers spot differences in thickness of Milky Way Galaxy

Space may appear vast and empty, but it's full of cosmological objects that are invisible to the human eye. From our vantage point on Earth, many of these objects fall between astronomers and what they hope to observe, impacting what they find. This scenario was recently encountered by scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation's Green Bank Observatory (GBO), who were attempting to study the Smith Cloud, tucked away behind dense layers of gas and dust in our own Milky Way galaxy.