Fossil Galaxy tagged posts

Astronomers discover New ‘Fossil Galaxy’ Buried Deep within the Milky Way

An all-sky image of the stars in the Milky Way as seen from Earth. The coloured rings show the approximate extent of the stars that came from the fossil galaxy known as Heracles. Credit: Danny Horta-Darrington (LJMU), ESA/Gaia, SDSS

Scientists working with data from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys’ Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) have discovered a “fossil galaxy” hidden in the depths of our own Milky Way. This result, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, may shake up our understanding of how the Milky Way grew into the galaxy we see today.

The proposed fossil galaxy may have collided with the Milky Way ten billion years ago, when our galaxy was still in its infancy...

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