Large galaxies like our Milky Way are the result of mergers of smaller galaxies. An outstanding question is whether a galaxy like the Milky Way is the product of many small mergers or of a few large ones. The University of Groningen’s Professor of Astronomy, Amina Helmi, has spent most of her career looking for ‘fossils’ in our Milky Way which might offer some hints as to its evolution. She uses the chemical composition, the position and the trajectory of stars in the halo to deduce their history and thereby to identify the mergers which created the early Milky Way.
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