Topic description and stories

Artist's impression of a collision between the Milky Way and a massive dwarf

The Gaia Sausage: the major collision that changed the Milky Way

04 Jul 2018

An international team of astronomers has discovered an ancient and dramatic head-on collision between the Milky Way and a smaller object, dubbed ‘the...

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Artist’s impression of a runaway star

Fastest stars in the Milky Way are ‘runaways’ from another galaxy

05 Jul 2017

A group of astronomers have shown that the fastest-moving stars in our galaxy – which are travelling so fast that they can escape the Milky Way – are...

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Artist's impression of dark matter clumps around a Milky Way-like galaxy

Massive holes ‘punched’ through a trail of stars likely caused by dark matter

07 Sep 2016

The discovery of two massive holes punched through a stream of stars could help answer questions about the nature of dark matter, the mysterious...

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The dwarf galaxies are located near the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, at the centre of the image.

Welcome to the neighbourhood: new dwarf galaxies discovered in orbit around the Milky Way

10 Mar 2015

Astronomers have discovered a ‘treasure trove’ of rare dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way. The discoveries could hold the key to...

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Artist impression of Sagittarius

A beast with four tails

30 Nov 2011

The Milky Way galaxy continues to devour its small neighbouring dwarf galaxies and the evidence is spread out across the sky.

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Artist's impression of a dwarf galaxy seen from the surface of a hypothetical exoplanet.

Dark matter is smoother than we thought

25 Oct 2011

If a galaxy is seen as a peach, the standard cosmological model portrays dark matter as the ‘pit at its centre’. Now a study of two dwarf galaxies by...

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