Comfortably Numb
Antediluvian
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2018
- Messages
- 9,008
- Location
- Phone
This unreal image of the Milky Way's center could rewrite galactic history
Source: cnet.com
Date: 16 December, 2019
A survey of 700,000 stars at the Milky Way's center suggests a violent outburst of star-forming activity 1 billion years ago.
A breakthrough survey of over 700,000 stars near the Milky Way's galactic center has produced one of the most stunning images of our home galaxy. Astronomers studying the massive population of stars in the "nuclear disk" at the center of the galaxy hypothesize there were two major periods of star formation in the region, contradicting earlier beliefs it was in a near-constant state of star formation.
The study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Dec. 16, gathered the new images using the High Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager (HAWK-I) on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, which is able to image the cosmos in near-infrared bands. That allows the astronomers to peer through much of the dense gas and debris that clouds our vision of the Milky Way's center...
[...]
The new research shows the Milky Way's early life was particularly fruitful for the nuclear disk. During the galaxy's first 5 billion years, over 80% of the galaxy's stars were born, but then it dipped into a "quiescent" state, where star formation dropped away. But a huge increase in activity occurred just 1 billion years ago, when approximately 5% of the center's stellar mass suddenly burst to life.
https://www-cnet-com.cdn.ampproject...-milky-ways-center-rewrites-galactic-history/
Source: cnet.com
Date: 16 December, 2019
A survey of 700,000 stars at the Milky Way's center suggests a violent outburst of star-forming activity 1 billion years ago.
A breakthrough survey of over 700,000 stars near the Milky Way's galactic center has produced one of the most stunning images of our home galaxy. Astronomers studying the massive population of stars in the "nuclear disk" at the center of the galaxy hypothesize there were two major periods of star formation in the region, contradicting earlier beliefs it was in a near-constant state of star formation.
The study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Dec. 16, gathered the new images using the High Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager (HAWK-I) on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, which is able to image the cosmos in near-infrared bands. That allows the astronomers to peer through much of the dense gas and debris that clouds our vision of the Milky Way's center...
[...]
The new research shows the Milky Way's early life was particularly fruitful for the nuclear disk. During the galaxy's first 5 billion years, over 80% of the galaxy's stars were born, but then it dipped into a "quiescent" state, where star formation dropped away. But a huge increase in activity occurred just 1 billion years ago, when approximately 5% of the center's stellar mass suddenly burst to life.
https://www-cnet-com.cdn.ampproject...-milky-ways-center-rewrites-galactic-history/