Origin of the Galactic Bulge

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Text, News From The Universe. November 6, 2020
 
Origin of the Galactic Bulge
 
Images, deep field views of the Milky Way galaxy.
 
Text, A survey of the inner 1,000 light years of the Milky Way's central bulge indicates that stars there formed in a single burst of star birth, rather than gradually over time.
 
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Using the ground-based Victor M Blanco 4-meter Telescope, astronomers analyzed the chemical composition of 70,000 stars.

Old stars in the core of the Milky Way are metal-rich, which is usually the case for younger stars, suggesting something unusual occurred there.
 
It is unclear where the huge influx of gas to form the stars came from; one possibility is a merger with another young galaxy 10 billion years ago.
 
The massive amount of data collected by the galaxy center survey will be analyzed further and may shed some light on the central structures of other spiral galaxies.
 
This news was brought to you in part by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore MD.