Some ten billion years ago, the Milky Way merged with a large galaxy. The stars from this partner, named Gaia-Enceladus, make up most of the Milky Way’s halo and also shaped its thick disk, giving it its inflated form...
Read MoreMilky Way’s Halo tagged posts
Using colors to identify the approximate ages of >130,000 stars in the Milky Way’s halo, Notre Dame astronomers have produced the clearest picture yet of how the galaxy formed more than 13.5 billion years ago. The chronographic (age) map supports a hierarchical model of galaxy formation. That model, developed by theoreticians over the past few decades, suggests that the Milky Way formed by merging and accretion of small mini-halos containing stars and gas, and that the oldest of the Milky Way’s stars are at the center of the galaxy and younger stars and galaxies merged with the Milky Way, drawn in by gravity over billions of years...
Read MoreAstronomers have surprisingly found the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy’s disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust. This new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets, galaxies like our own, and what the future holds for these galaxies...
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