Stars in Halo of the Milky Way Often Travel in Groups

[Bible Speaks]

 

Tue, 01/31/2017 - 9:52am

by Netherlands Research School for Astronomy

Many stars in the halo that surrounds the Milky Way travel in groups. This is the outcome of a recent analysis of data for millions of stars from the Gaia space mission. Astronomers report their discovery today in the international journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The Milky Way, our own Galaxy, has likely formed in part from the merging of many smaller systems. How exactly that happened, is still a puzzle. To learn more about the history of formation of the Milky Way, astronomers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and UC Riverside in the U.S., have inspected the motions of stars in the so-called Galactic halo. Stars in the halo are more pristine and spend most of their time outside of the disk-like structure that gives the Milky Way its name. It is thought that these halo stars are the stars that joined the Milky Way onboard of small galaxies.

 

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