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Our very personal Milky Way galaxy had a dramatic childhood. Astronomers have unveiled a brand new chapter in its memoir with the discovery of a possible “fossil galaxy” hidden close to its heart.
The proposed fossil galaxy is known as Heracles for the Greek hero. It in all probability tangled with the Milky Way round 10 billion years in the past, again when our galaxy was a child.
“Stars originally belonging to Heracles account for roughly one third of the mass of the entire Milky Way halo today — meaning that this newly-discovered ancient collision must have been a major event in the history of our galaxy,” the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) mentioned in a press release Thursday. The SDSS was concerned in the analysis.
A analysis group led by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) graduate scholar Danny Horta printed a paper on Heracles this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal.
To discover Heracles, the group noticed stars that did not match the Milky Way’s. “These stars are so different that they could only have come from another galaxy. By studying them in detail, we could trace out the precise location and history of this fossil galaxy,” mentioned Horta.
We’ve seen proof of dramatic galactic mergers in the Milky Way’s deep previous. Recent research have seemed right into a time when our galaxy wolfed up a dwarf galaxy known as Gaia-Enceladus.
Heracles has been notably elusive, since indicators of its existence are obscured by interstellar mud clouds. The analysis group used the SDSS Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) to see by way of this mess utilizing near-infrared mild. “To find a fossil galaxy like this one, we had to look at the detailed chemical makeup and motions of tens of thousands of stars,” mentioned examine co-author and LJMU astrophysicist Ricardo Schiavon.
The Milky Way will not be finished with its galaxy-colliding methods. A Milky Way-Andromeda galaxy crash is lurking billions of years into the future. It’s robust being a galaxy. Sometimes you are the Milky Way, consuming them up. Sometimes you are Heracles, the one getting swallowed.
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