New Research Sheds Light on Creation of Milky Way
Aging individual stars helps date early merger event
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New research provides the best evidence to date into the timing of how our early Milky Way came together, including the merger with a key satellite galaxy.
Using relatively new methods in astronomy, the researchers were able to identify the most precise ages currently possible for a sample of about a hundred red giant stars in the galaxy.
With this and other data, the researchers were able to show what was happening when the Milky Way merged with an orbiting satellite galaxy, known as Gaia-Enceladus, about 10 billion years ago.