Astronomers find evidence of Milky Way 'swallowing' dwarf galaxy

A team of Chinese and Japanese astronomers found that a special star came from a dwarf galaxy that had been disrupted and "swallowed" by the Milky Way.

Small stellar systems such as dwarf galaxies are believed to be the main building blocks of our galaxy. However, it is unclear how many and what kind of stars in our galaxy have originated from satellite dwarf galaxies.

A research team led by Zhao Gang, an astronomer from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, discovered a chemically peculiar star with an unusually low amount of magnesium, but which contains an excessive amount of heavy elements such as europium, gold and uranium.