Researchers have reported that a population of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way is the basis from which our galaxy grew; the ancient heart of the Milky Way is a circular protogalactic that spans almost 18,000 light-years and has a mass of about 100 million times the mass of the Sun.
For their research, scientists used data collected by the Gaia Space Observatory, and astrophysicists explored about 2 million stars in a wide area around the center of the galaxy, which is located in the constellation of the Shooter, in search of those, and the ratio of metals to hydrogen does not exceed 3% of the Sun.
The researchers then studied how these stars are moving in space. Only those who do not fly into the vast eagle of the poor metal stars that make up the Milky Way disc are selected to form a collection of 18,000 ancient stars. The researchers believe that they form the core around which the Galactica was formed.
The base core contains the oldest Milky Way stars, estimated by researchers to be over 12.5 billion years old.
The protogalactics are compact, which means that since its formation it has been of little concern, smaller galaxies have crashed into the Milky Way, increasing its mass, but scientists believe that later mergers have not reached the core, keeping it in its original form.