The Milky Way devoured a smaller galaxy about 11.8 billion years ago

The event represents the Milky Way’s earliest-known galactic merger.

WASHINGTON, Aug 18 : The Milky Way, a large and spiral-shaped galaxy that is home to hundreds of billions of stars including our sun, has taken a long and complicated path to achieve its current dimensions, as illustrated by new research documenting a milestone event early in its history.Scientists observing clusters o

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered evidence of a galaxy merger in the Milky Way's ancient history.

An illustration shows a stage in the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, as it will unfold over the next several billion years. NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger Look up on a dark night and the Milky Way appears as a calm band of

A new study suggests one of the most significant clashes in the history of the Milky Way, dubbed the "Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles" merger, happened 12 billion years ago.