Milky Way Family Tree tagged posts

Milky Way Family Tree

Family tree of the Milky Way. The main progenitor of the Milky Way is denoted by the trunk of the tree, coloured by stellar mass. Black lines indicate the five identified galaxies. Grey dotted lines depict other mergers that the Milky Way experienced that could not be connected to a specific progenitor. From left to right, the six images along the top of the figure indicate the identified progenitor galaxies: Sagittarius, Sequoia, Kraken, the Milky Way’s Main progenitor, the progenitor of the Helmi streams, and Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage. | © D. Kruijssen

Astrophysicists reconstruct the galaxy merger history of our home galaxy. Galaxies like the Milky Way formed by the merging of smaller progenitor galaxies...

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