Milky Way tagged posts

White dwarf stars in the early Milky Way. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Calamida and K. Sahu (STScI), and the SWEEPS Science Team; Credit for Ground-based Image: A. Fujii

Peering deep into the Milky Way’s crowded central hub of stars, Hubble researchers have uncovered for the 1st time a population of ancient white dwarfs, smoldering remnants of once-vibrant stars that inhabited the core. This can yield clues to how our galaxy was built, long before Earth/sun formed.

The white dwarfs contain information about the stars that existed about 12 billion years ago that burned out to form the white dwarfs. As these dying embers of once-radiant stars cool, they serve as multi-billion-year-old time pieces that tell astronomers about the Milky Way’s groundbreaking years.

An analysis of the Hubble data suppor...

A newly discovered dwarf galaxy orbiting our own Milky Way has offered up a surprise — it appears to be radiating gamma rays, according to an analysis by physicists at Carnegie Mellon, Brown, and Cambridge universities. The exact source of this high-energy light is uncertain at this point, but it just might be a signal of dark matter lurking at the galaxy’s center. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi-LAT Collaboration/Geringer-Sameth & Walker/Carnegie Mellon University/Koushiappas/Brown University

A newly discovered dwarf galaxy orbiting our own Milky Way has offered up a surprise – it appears to be radiating gamma rays, according to an analysis by physicists...