A Star in the Big Dipper Is an Alien Invader
By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | May 10, 2019 07:42am ET
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In a computer simulation of spiral galaxy formation, a halo structure partially forms from a pileup of many small galaxies. Even after merged galaxies disintegrate, individual stars retain chemical traces from their original galaxies.
Credit: Takayuki Saito/Takaaki Takeda/Sorahiko Nukatani/4D2U Project, NAOJ
A star in the Big Dipper is an intergalactic alien, according to clues in its chemical fingerprints.
The star's unusual chemistry is unlike that of all known stars in the Milky Way and instead has more in common with stars in nearby dwarf galaxies, new research reveals.
Researchers suspected that the stellar oddball, named J1124+4535, originated in a dwarf galaxy that collided with the Milky Way long ago. According to that theory, when the dwarf galaxy fell apart, it stranded this star in our cosmic neighborhood.
The star was first discovered in the constellation Ursa Major in 2015, by the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) in China. Higher-resolution images were captured in 2017 by the Subaru Telescope in Japan, the scientists reported April 29 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/65452-weirdo-star-from-another-galaxy.html
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