Wonderful Miras in the Heart of the Galaxy
The discovery of carbon-rich Mira variables in the Galactic centre could imply the existence of a number of young stars among the otherwise old Galactic bulge population.
Searching for Evidence of Dark Matter in Stellar Streams
Can we hunt down invisible dark matter halos around the Milky Way using the evidence they leave behind as they pass through stellar streams?
Can you tell a sibling from a doppelganger?
Abundance analysis, or chemical tagging, is widely use to identify stars with a common birth. But is a similar abundance alone enough to identify siblings? Can’t stars have doppelgangers?
The Milky Way – Tearing Apart Friendships for Billions of Years
Do the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies have their own satellites?
Our halo is getting younger, spatially speaking
The halo of the Milky Way is old. You’ve probably heard that a million times. But can we know more about its age than simply “it’s old”? Yes, we can — and that leads to interesting results!
Image credits: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss/Ohio State/A Gupta et al.
Like a Rolling Coin: How Stars Trace Out The Dark Matter Surrounding Us
As smaller galaxies collide with our own they’re slowly torn apart. By watching how they spread across the night’s sky we can infer an incredible amount about the shape of the galaxy and the nature of dark matter.