Gaia-Enceladus stars across the sky. All-sky distribution of a set of stars detected by the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Gaia mission. These stars move along elongated trajectories in the opposite direction to the majority of our Milky Way’s other hundred billion stars and have a markedly different chemical composition, indicating that they belong to a clearly distinct stellar population. It is thought that these stars are the debris of a galaxy that merged with our Milky Way during its early formation stages, 10 billion years ago. This galaxy has been named Gaia-Enceladus. Purple stars are nearest and yellow stars the most distant. White circles indicate globular clusters from Gaia-Enceladus, while the blue-lined star-shaped markers are variable stars from Gaia-Enceladus. The colour-coding is for the parallax of the stars in milliarcseconds. | |
Licence : | Droits gérés |
Crédit: | Science Photo Library / DPAC; A. Helmi et al 2018 / Gaia / ESA |
Taille de l’image : | 4411 px × 2481 px |
Model Release : | Non requis |
Property Release : | Non requis |
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