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Caption
Movie of one of the E-MOSAICS simulations, showing the formation of a Milky Way-like galaxy. The grey shading shows gas fragmenting, forming stars, and falling onto the central galaxy. New born stars blow bubbles into the gas with their intense radiation and supernova explosions. The globular clusters are indicated by coloured dots, where the colour indicates the chemical composition: blue clusters have a low level of elements more massive than helium, whereas red clusters have a high level of such elements. Over time, the merging of the central galaxy with smaller, satellite galaxies brings in a large number of globular clusters. The ages, chemical compositions, and orbits of these clusters reveal the mass of the progenitor galaxy that they originally formed in, as well as the time at which it merged with the central galaxy. Together, these enabled the family tree of the Milky Way to be deciphered.
Credit
J. Pfeffer, D. Kruijssen, R. Crain, N. Bastian
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