{"id":31366,"date":"2022-02-22T09:44:44","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T22:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/?p=31366"},"modified":"2022-05-03T14:10:26","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T04:10:26","slug":"what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/","title":{"rendered":"What ingredients went into the galactic blender to create the Milky Way?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our galaxy is a giant \u2018smoothie\u2019 of blended stars and gas but a new study tells us where the components came from.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In its early days, the Milky Way was like a giant smoothie, as if galaxies consisting of billions of stars, and an enormous amount of gas had been thrown together into a gigantic blender.<\/h3>\n

But a new study picks apart this mixture by analysing individual stars to identify which originated inside the galaxy and which began life outside.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAlthough the Milky Way is our home galaxy, we still do not understand how it formed and evolved,\u201d says researcher Sven Buder from the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) and the Australian National University (ANU).<\/p>\n

\"\"

A simulation of a collision between the young Milky Way and a smaller galaxy \u2013 Dr Tobias Buck (AIP\/MPIA\/NYU).<\/p><\/div>\n

His paper, published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/em>, analyses the light from stars in detail, helping to understand what elements went into the creation of the Milky Way we know today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Milky Way ate up lots of smaller galaxies but, until recently, we did not have enough evidence of that to say for sure,\u201d Buder says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s because simple images of stars in our Milky Way look the same \u2013 whether they were born inside the galaxy or outside and then blended into the galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buder and colleagues in the Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) team used Australia\u2019s largest optical telescope, the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), at Siding Spring Observatory to split light from more than 600,000 stars into wavelengths with the HERMES (High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph) instrument.<\/p>\n

This effectively creates 600,000 stellar rainbows known as spectra.<\/p>\n

Within each of these rainbows are specific bands of light \u2013 rather like tiny unique barcodes \u2013 that vary depending on a star\u2019s chemical composition.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Just by looking at how abundant are sodium, iron, magnesium, and manganese in a star, we can tell apart stars born in the Milky Way (green) or outside (yellow).<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIf an image is worth a thousand words, these spectra are worth more than a thousand pictures,\u201d says Buder. \u201cBy \u2018scanning\u2019 these stellar barcodes, we measured how abundant 30 elements, such as sodium, iron, magnesium, and manganese, were, and how they appeared in different concentrations depending on where the star was born.\u201d<\/p>\n

This discovery is an early step towards reconstructing a picture of the \u201cchildhood\u201d of the Milky Way to get an idea of the size of the galaxies that it consumed in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could also help us understand how several of the features of the galaxy we know today came into being,\u201d says Buder.<\/p>\n

One mystery the new observations could help solved is why there are two distinct groups of stars in the disc that we see as the \u201cmilky\u201d band in the night sky.<\/p>\n

\"Someone

The Milky Way has two distinct populations of stars, one older than the other. The older stars have moved so they look like they bulge out of the main plane of the Milky Way, while the younger stars form a much thinner band in the plane.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe Milky Way spread out across the night sky is a familiar sight, and when we look at it, we are actually gazing into the centre of our galaxy with its billions of stars,\u201d says Buder.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we are looking at two populations of stars, one much older than the other. The old stars have moved so they look like they bulge out of the main plane of the Milky Way, while the younger stars form a much thinner band in the plane.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we don\u2019t know why this has happened and our latest findings of the remnants of gigantic, galactic collisions may help us understand,\u201d says Buder.<\/p>\n

Buder\u2019s paper provides the latest revelations relying on data from the Gaia project \u2013 an ambitious satellite mission to chart a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way to help understand its orbits, composition, formation, and evolution.<\/p>\n

The Gaia satellite measurements can help us to find candidates of previously extragalactic stars, because they still move differently from a typical Milky Way star. But the extragalactic origin of a star can only be confirmed by its chemical fingerprint.<\/p>\n

The GALAH survey is an Australian-led Large Observing Program using the HERMES instrument to obtain the highest spectral resolution multi-dimensional datasets for more than a million stars of all ages and locations in the Milky Way, to trace the full history of the Galaxy.<\/p>\n

The HERMES instrument was built by the Australian Astronomical Observatory, which has since become the Astralis Instrumentation Consortium. Astralis receives $5M per year from the NCRIS programme, and combines expertise from Macquarie University, the University of Sydney, and ANU. Astralis will strengthen Australia\u2019s competitiveness for instrumentation contracts at major observatories world-wide.<\/p>\n

For more information<\/h3>\n

Tamzin Byrne,\u00a0tamzin@scienceinpublic.com.au<\/a>, +61 432 47 42 48
\nNiall Byrne,\u00a0niall@scienceinpublic.com.au<\/a>, +61 417 131 977<\/p>\n

Available for interview<\/h3>\n

Dr Sven Buder,\u00a0sven.buder@anu.edu.au<\/a><\/p>\n

Paper Details<\/h2>\n

The GALAH Survey: chemical tagging and chrono-chemodynamics of accreted halo stars with GALAH+ DR3 and\u00a0Gaia<\/em>\u00a0eDR3<\/p>\n

DOI:\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/mnras\/stab3504<\/a><\/p>\n

Authors<\/h2>\n

Sven Buder,\u00a0Karin Lind,\u00a0Melissa K Ness,\u00a0Diane K Feuillet,\u00a0Danny Horta,\u00a0Stephanie Monty,\u00a0Tobias Buck,\u00a0Thomas Nordlander,\u00a0Joss Bland-Hawthorn,\u00a0Andrew R Casey,\u00a0Gayandhi M De\u00a0Silva,\u00a0Valentina D\u2019Orazi,\u00a0Ken C Freeman,\u00a0Michael R Hayden,\u00a0Janez Kos,\u00a0Sarah L Martell,\u00a0Geraint F Lewis,\u00a0Jane Lin,\u00a0Katharine J Schlesinger,\u00a0Sanjib Sharma,\u00a0Jeffrey D Simpson,\u00a0Dennis Stello,\u00a0Daniel B Zucker,\u00a0Toma\u017e Zwitter,\u00a0Ioana Ciuc\u0103,\u00a0Jonathan Horner,\u00a0Chiaki Kobayashi,\u00a0Yuan-Sen Ting (\u4e01\u6e90\u68ee),\u00a0Rosemary F G Wyse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":31370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,18,2,7,9,10],"tags":[103,115,102,32],"coauthors":[210],"class_list":["post-31366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anu","category-galah","category-news","category-science","category-sydney","category-unsw","tag-australian-national-university","tag-gaia-survey","tag-galah","tag-galaxies"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat ingredients went into the galactic blender to create the Milky Way? - ASTRO 3D %<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What ingredients went into the galactic blender to create the Milky Way? - ASTRO 3D %\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"ASTRO 3D\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-02-21T22:44:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-05-03T04:10:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/galactic-mergers-low-res.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1570\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1448\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Bill Condie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Bill Condie\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/\",\"name\":\"What ingredients went into the galactic blender to create the Milky Way? - ASTRO 3D %\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/galactic-mergers-low-res.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-02-21T22:44:44+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-05-03T04:10:26+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#\/schema\/person\/7c1aa497dff77978dae78be2b4ef07cf\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/galactic-mergers-low-res.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/galactic-mergers-low-res.png\",\"width\":1570,\"height\":1448},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"What ingredients went into the galactic blender to create the Milky Way?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/\",\"name\":\"ASTRO 3D\",\"description\":\"Unlocking the Universe - Inspiring the Future\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#\/schema\/person\/7c1aa497dff77978dae78be2b4ef07cf\",\"name\":\"Bill Condie\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/35b03b6bf0619fe57ee633d985bb58a5\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Science-in-Public-150x150.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Science-in-Public-150x150.jpg\",\"caption\":\"Bill Condie\"},\"description\":\"Bill Condie has been a journalist for more than 35 years, mostly writing and editing for British national newspapers, including The Times, The Guardian, the Observer, The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, and the London Evening Standard. His career has been wide-ranging from international affairs, to politics and science. Since returning to Australia he has concentrated on science journalism and writing, first working at Australia\u2019s leading science magazine Cosmos, first as an editor and later as Publisher, then as Head of Publishing at the Royal Institution of Australia. He has also produced written and video content both for traditional media outlets and for researchers, universities and other institutions including Flinders University, Monash University and the University of Adelaide, to help them communicate complex subjects to a wide audience.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/science-in-public-pty-ltd\/\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/member\/science-in-public\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What ingredients went into the galactic blender to create the Milky Way? - ASTRO 3D %","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What ingredients went into the galactic blender to create the Milky Way? - ASTRO 3D %","og_url":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/","og_site_name":"ASTRO 3D","article_published_time":"2022-02-21T22:44:44+00:00","article_modified_time":"2022-05-03T04:10:26+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1570,"height":1448,"url":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/galactic-mergers-low-res.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Bill Condie","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Bill Condie","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/","url":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/","name":"What ingredients went into the galactic blender to create the Milky Way? - ASTRO 3D %","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/galactic-mergers-low-res.png","datePublished":"2022-02-21T22:44:44+00:00","dateModified":"2022-05-03T04:10:26+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#\/schema\/person\/7c1aa497dff77978dae78be2b4ef07cf"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/galactic-mergers-low-res.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/galactic-mergers-low-res.png","width":1570,"height":1448},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/what-ingredients-went-into-the-galactic-blender-to-create-the-milky-way\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What ingredients went into the galactic blender to create the Milky Way?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#website","url":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/","name":"ASTRO 3D","description":"Unlocking the Universe - Inspiring the Future","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#\/schema\/person\/7c1aa497dff77978dae78be2b4ef07cf","name":"Bill Condie","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/35b03b6bf0619fe57ee633d985bb58a5","url":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Science-in-Public-150x150.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Science-in-Public-150x150.jpg","caption":"Bill Condie"},"description":"Bill Condie has been a journalist for more than 35 years, mostly writing and editing for British national newspapers, including The Times, The Guardian, the Observer, The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, and the London Evening Standard. His career has been wide-ranging from international affairs, to politics and science. Since returning to Australia he has concentrated on science journalism and writing, first working at Australia\u2019s leading science magazine Cosmos, first as an editor and later as Publisher, then as Head of Publishing at the Royal Institution of Australia. He has also produced written and video content both for traditional media outlets and for researchers, universities and other institutions including Flinders University, Monash University and the University of Adelaide, to help them communicate complex subjects to a wide audience.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/science-in-public-pty-ltd\/"],"url":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/member\/science-in-public\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31366"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31637,"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31366\/revisions\/31637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31366"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=31366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}