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Mergers, Mayhem, and the Milky Way

May 20, 2026
Mergers, Mayhem, and the Milky Way
By Evan Gough (https://ift.tt/0LAdPWn)

This image shows the evidence for the Gaia Enceladus Sausage merger with the Milky Way. The yellow arrows show the motion of stars from the dwarf galaxy. The Gaia spacecraft measured these stellar kinematics to detect the ancient merger, and now new research has determined the timing of that merger with greater accuracy. Image Credit: ESA (artist’s impression and composition); Koppelman, Villalobos and Helmi (simulation); NASA/ESA/Hubble (galaxy image). LICENCE: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Galaxies grow through mergers and collisions, and astronomers want to know more about the mergers in the Milky Way's past. But mergers can stir up the stars in the resulting galaxy, making it difficult to determine exactly when an ancient merger occurred. A new study led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) may have overcome that challenge.



May 20, 2026 at 08:56PM
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