by bystander » Wed Feb 17, 2010 7:07 pm
No Place to Hide: Missing Primitive Stars Outside Milky Way Uncovered
ESO Science Release: eso1007 - 2010 Feb 17
After years of successful concealment, the most primitive stars outside our Milky Way galaxy have finally been unmasked. New observations using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have been used to solve an important astrophysical puzzle concerning the oldest stars in our galactic neighbourhood — which is crucial for our understanding of the earliest stars in the Universe.
...
The Fornax and Sculptor Dwarf Galaxies are two of our Milky Way’s neighbouring dwarf galaxies. The Milky Way is, like all large galaxies, thought to have formed from smaller galaxies in the early days of the Universe. These small galaxies should also contain many very old stars, just as the Milky Way does, and a team of astronomers has now shown that this is indeed the case.
The Fornax Dwarf Galaxy (ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2)
The Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy (ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2)
[url=http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1007/]No Place to Hide: Missing Primitive Stars Outside Milky Way Uncovered[/url]
ESO Science Release: eso1007 - 2010 Feb 17
[quote]After years of successful concealment, the most primitive stars outside our Milky Way galaxy have finally been unmasked. New observations using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have been used to solve an important astrophysical puzzle concerning the oldest stars in our galactic neighbourhood — which is crucial for our understanding of the earliest stars in the Universe.
...
The Fornax and Sculptor Dwarf Galaxies are two of our Milky Way’s neighbouring dwarf galaxies. The Milky Way is, like all large galaxies, thought to have formed from smaller galaxies in the early days of the Universe. These small galaxies should also contain many very old stars, just as the Milky Way does, and a team of astronomers has now shown that this is indeed the case.[/quote]
[img]http://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/medium/eso1007a.jpg[/img]
[url=http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1007a/]The Fornax Dwarf Galaxy [i](ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2)[/i][/url]
[img]http://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/medium/eso1007b.jpg[/img]
[url=http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1007b/]The Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy [i](ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2)[/i][/url]