The Milky Way absorbed a large dwarf galaxy about 12 billion years ago, pushing the known history of major galactic mergers much farther back in time. Hubble observations of ancient star clusters

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, grew to its current size in part by consuming smaller galaxies. Now, new data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way in the earliest phases of its evolution.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered evidence that the young Milky Way swallowed a dwarf galaxy 11.8 billion years ago, reshaping its evolution.

Look up on a dark night and the Milky Way appears as a calm band of stars across the sky. But our galaxy has a violent past. For more than 13 billion years it has grown through star formation and mergers with other galaxies.

Our Milky Way galaxy underwent a complicated and violent process to grow to its current size, new research has shown. The galaxy – the home of hundreds of billions of stars including our own Sun – underwent a pivotal event in its ancient history,

Those stars ain't from around here.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope found definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the Milky Way just 2 billion years after the Big Bang.

Scientists observing clusters of stars congregated near the Milky Way's centre have discovered evidence that our galaxy swallowed a smaller galaxy roughly 11.8 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 15 per cent of its current age.