There’s more than meets the eye 👀 With @hubbleesa, astronomers found that the Milky Way swallowed a dwarf galaxy 11.8 billion years ago, just 2 billion years after the Big Bang. Its stars still live among ours, hidden in some of our galaxy’s oldest star clusters. It’s the earliest big merger we’ve found so far, and it pushes our galaxy’s known history 1.8 billion years further back. 📹 @europeanspaceagency 🎞️ @gettyimages; Martin Kornmesser & Patrik Jonsson, Greg Novak & Joel Primack, @ucsc; Koppelman, Villalobos & Helmi, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, @universityofgroningen, The Netherlands; Halo stars: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, T Donlon et al. 2024; Background Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar; Vintergatan – Renaud, Agertz et al. (2021); NASA, ESA, L. Calçada, F. Ferraro (@unibo), @creativecommons BY 4.0; M. Kornmesser(ESA/Hubble); NASA, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser, L. Calçada, WordlWideTelescope, G. Bacon (@space_telescopes); Theofanis N. Matsopoulos/ESA; NASA, ESA, ...