Extending the Rotational Velocity Profile of the Milky Way Galaxy to Points Beyond 8 Kiloparsecs.

This article describes a two-year project conducted by a high school astronomy club, in which they built a radio telescope to measure Doppler-shifted radio signals from within the Milky Way galaxy. The club analyzed the data and found that the orbital velocity of matter around the galactic center remains relatively constant as one travels outward, supporting the existence of dark matter. The article provides detailed information on the telescope design and data collection process. It also discusses the velocity profiles of the Milky Way galaxy based on intensity vs. relative velocity plots, which indicate that the velocities do not conform to the expected trend if all the mass is concentrated at the galactic center. This suggests the presence of dark matter distributed differently from visible matter, consistent with previous studies. The article also mentions the challenges and strengths of the project, which involved constructing a radio telescope to collect data on the hydrogen distribution in the galaxy. [Extracted from the article]