Tag Archive for 'Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus'

Using supercomputer simulations of galaxies like the Milky Way, Batrakov et al. found that galaxies with slowly rotating stellar haloes are more likely to have experienced a major ‘disk flip,’ where our Galaxy’s disk changed its orientation by more than 90 degrees. Image credit: Batrakov et al.

Our Milky Way Galaxy Likely Underwent Disk Flip after Ancient Galactic Collision: Study

Jul 22, 2026 by News Staff

A head-on collision with another galaxy billions of years ago may have dramatically reoriented the Milky Way’s disk, according to new supercomputer simulations...

This image from the Gemini North telescope shows a pair of interacting spiral galaxies: NGC 4568 (bottom) and NGC 4567 (top). Image credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / T.A. Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage & NSF’s NOIRLab / J. Miller, Gemini Observatory & NSF’s NOIRLab / M. Zamani, NSF’s NOIRLab / D. de Martin, NSF’s NOIRLab.

Violent Collision May Have Destroyed Milky Way’s First Stellar Disk

May 20, 2026 by News Staff

New simulations suggest a violent collision 11 billion years ago reshaped our Galaxy and triggered a burst of star formation. This image from the Gemini...

This image visualizes our Milky Way Galaxy and its surrounding halo of stars. The new Gaia data reveal that the wrinkles we see in the Milky Way were likely caused by a dwarf galaxy colliding with the Milky Way around 2.7 billion years ago. Our Galaxy’s two prominent satellite galaxies -- the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds -- are visible to the lower right, Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / Donlon et al. / Stefan Payne-Wardenaar.

Milky Way’s Last Major Merger Occurred Billions of Years Later than Previously Thought

Jun 7, 2024 by News Staff

This discovery was made possible by ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, which is mapping more than a billion stars throughout the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond, tracking...

This artist’s illustration emphasizes the shape of the stellar halo surrounding our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: Melissa Weiss / Harvard & Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics.

Milky Way’s Stellar Halo is Oblong and Tilted, Astronomers Say

Nov 21, 2022 by News Staff

Accounting for approximately 1% of the total stellar mass, the stellar halo — the diffuse cloud of stars surrounding the Galactic disk — plays...