An impression of the encounter between the Milky Way galaxy and the smaller Sausage galaxy about 8 billion to 10 billion years ago. The record of this ancient encounter is still preserved in the velocities and chemistry of the stars.
Credit: V. Belokurov (Cambridge, UK); Based on image by ESO/Juan Carlos Muñoz
An international team has discovered an ancient and dramatic head-on collision between the Milky Way and a smaller object, dubbed the “Sausage” galaxy. The cosmic crash was a defining event in the early history of the Milky Way and reshaped the structure of our galaxy, fashioning both its inner bulge and its outer halo, the astronomers report in a series of new papers.
The astronomers propose that around 8 billion to 10 billion years ago, an unknown dwarf galaxy smashed into our own ...
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