Barred Spiral Milky Way. (c) Illustration Credit: R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA
Chasing dark matter with the oldest stars in the Milky Way,
Phys.org, 24 Jan 2018
APOGEE South Spectrograph Opens in Las Campanas Observatory, Chile
Seeing the whole galaxy with a ‘second eye on the sky’,
Phys.org, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, 29 March 2017
(c) John Wilson (University of Virginia)
Novel Phylogenetic Approach to Star Formation Research Finds ‘Common Ancestors’
Galactica stellaris: Astronomers Build a Family Tree for the Milky Way’s Stars,
Scientific American, Mara Johnson-Groh, 27 March 2017
(c) NASA, ESA
Study Explains Presence of Extremely Massive Supermassive Black Holes When Universe <800M Years Old
New Model Explains the Formation of Supermassive Black Holes in the Very Early Universe,
AAAS / EurekAlert!, Dr. John Regan, et al., University of Helsinki, 14 March 2017
Max-Planck and CSIRO Map Hydrogen Atoms in Milky Way
This Is the Most Detailed Hydrogen Map of the Milky Way Ever Created,
Gizmodo, 20 October 2016 (c) Benjamin Winkel and the HI4PI collaboration
University of Nottingham Professor + Team Estimate There May Be >2T Galaxies in Universe
Galaxy Formation Simulated on Swiss Supercomuters
The research group including Professor Lucio Mayer of University of Zurich and astronomers from University of California created the galaxy formation simulation using supercomputer resources of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre and the NASA Colombia Cluster. Their work represents a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the dynamic formation of barred spiral galaxies much like the Milky Way.
Between Switzerland and California the project took 2 years of dedicated work and 5,000,000 CPU hours. That means it would have taken your average PC many hundreds of years to calculate.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQBzdcFkB7w]
In a separate video during an interview by Michele De Lorenzi, Mayer describes the process of creating the simulation and some of the difficulties that held back decades of attempts to successfully simulate formation of large complex galaxies.