As per a 12-year study of huge stars, it has been discovered that Milky Way Galaxy has four spiral arms. These findings have ended the debate that was being carried out from years. As per images taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the Milky Way galaxy showed only two arms.

The latest research is part of the Red MSX Source (RMS) Survey, which was launched by academics at the University of Leeds.

As per Professor Melvin Hoare, "The Milky Way is our galactic home and studying its structure gives us a unique opportunity to understand how a very typical spiral galaxy works in terms of where stars are born and why". He is a member of the RMS Survey Team in the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Leeds and a co-author of the research paper.

In the 1950's, astronomers used radio telescopes to record our Galaxy. They concentrated on gaseous clouds in Milky Way, in which new stars are born, revealing four major arms.

In the new study, astronomers used a number of radio telescopes in Australia, US and China to separately study nearly 1,650 huge stars. These stars were identified by the RMS Survey. From their annotations, the distances and luminosities of the huge stars were calculated. These calculations reveal a distribution across four spiral arms.