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There is another galaxy about to collide with the

SCIENCE UPDATE 4/7/94

A cluster of stars is colliding with the Milky Way but earthlings have
nothing to fear, three British astronomers say.

The collision is being played out in ultra slow motion on the far
reaches of the galaxy, 80,000 light years from our solar system and 50,000
light years from the center of the Milky Way, said Rodrigo Ibata, a British
research student who made the discovery. A light year equals 5.88 trillion
miles.

The Sagittarius galaxy, a cluster of stars within the constellation
Sagittarius, is so close to the Milky Way that it in the process of being
"cannibalized, and its stars will be incorporated into our own Milky Way,"
Ibata said Tuesday (4-5-94).

That process will take a few hundred million years, and is not likely to
produce any spectacular scenes of stars bumping into each other, he said.

Ibata spoke by telephone from Edinburgh, Scotland, where the discovery
was announced at the European and National Astronomy Meeting. Ibata worked
with Mike Irwin of the Royal Greenwich Observatory and Gerry Gilmore of the
Institute of Astronomy.

The Sagittarius galaxy is the 11th "dwarf spheroidal companion galaxy"
discovered orbiting the Milky Way. American astronomer Harlow Shapley found
the first two, in the constellations Fornax and Sculptor, in 1938.

The Sagittarius galaxy earlier escaped notice because its stars are
scattered over such a wide area they cannot be distinguished from the
foreground stars of the Milky Way. It is probably making its first close
passage by the Milky Way in its 15 billion year orbit.

"Each time that such an event like this happens there is what we call a
density-wave created which can create whole other solar bodies like stars.
It is conceivable that the sun was formed in such a way," Ibata said.

"There could have been hundreds of events happening in the past which
could have determined the current shape of the Milky Way."

 
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