[NASA] Ancient Milky Way Merger

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About 12 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy known as LKH collided with a young Milky Way and merged with it. This artist’s concept portrays that collision. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovered definitive evidence of this collision by studying globular star clusters.

NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

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, released on Aug. 17, 2026, depicts a collision between our Milky Way galaxy and a dwarf galaxy known as LKH that happened about 12 billion years ago. A study of data from NASA’s 

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, recently published in the journal 

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, shows definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way galaxy in the earliest phases of its evolution. This finding extends our knowledge of our galaxy’s history 1.8 billion years further back in time than before.

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Image credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

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