Researchers from the University of Malta have found the "edge" of the Milky Way, where the galaxy gets less dense the farther away from the center it goes. The researchers studied the ages of over 100,000 giant stars from various surveys, including APOGEE-DR17, LAMOST-DR3, and Gaia. They found that the edge was between 11.28 and 12.15 kiloparsecs (or about 40,000 light years) from the galaxy's center, a relationship of stars' age and their location can be described as a U curve. This curve indicates that stars closer to the center of the galaxy are older, and progressively younger out to a certain point, which is the end of star-forming region. The outer reaches past the galaxy’s edge are populated with migrant stars that have been pushed out past it. The study suggests that this migration is due to gravitational forces from the spiral arms themselves or the central bar of this galaxy, or the "central bar" that can cause stars to slingshot out of the region.