Zone of Avoidance

Mm-hmm.

Um, the issue back in the '70s was that it, it was moving in the direction of the galactic center, which we called very creatively, um, or ominously actually, the Zone of Avoidance.

Ooh.

Yeah.

Um, I wanna, I wanna listen to a band called The Zone of Avoidance.

Yeah, there's gotta be one.

It-

[laughs]

Why? Where is it?

The exact gravitational center of this massive anomaly sits directly behind what astronomers formally refer to as the zone of avoidance.

The zone of avoidance, which is just a very majestic, formal way of saying that the Milky Way itself is stubbornly getting in our way, isn't it?

That is precisely what it is.

When we look out into the extragalactic sky from Earth, we have to remember our vantage point.

It obscures roughly 20% of the entire extragalactic sky at visible wavelengths.

20%.

Within the thickest parts of the zone of avoidance, the optical extinction can reach several magnitudes, meaning the light from beyond is almost entirely swallowed by the dust.

For decades, we couldn't see what was pulling us.

The Great Attractor lies directly behind the Zone of Avoidance, or ZOA.

Because the Milky Way is a flat disk of stars, dust, and gas, looking out toward the Great Attractor is like trying to see through a dense forest in a thick fog.

The galactic center of the Milky Way blocks about 20% of the sky in the optical spectrum.