A new device will help reconstruct the formation of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail.
Scientists have supercharged one of Earth's most powerful telescopes with new technology that will reveal how our galaxy formed in unprecedented detail.
Weave has been installed on the WHT, which sits high on a mountain top on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma. The name stands for WHT Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer - and that's exactly what it does.For each patch of sky the WHT is pointed at, astronomers identify the positions of a thousand stars. Weave's nimble robotic fingers then carefully place a fibre-optic - a light-transmitting tube - precisely on each location on a plate, pointing towards its corresponding star.
It grew from successive mergers with other small galaxies over billions of years. As well as the addition of stars from the new galaxies joining ours, each merger stirs things up enough to lead to brand new star formation. Dr Marc Balcells, who is in overall charge of the WHT told BBC News that he believed that Weave would lead to a big shift in our understanding of how galaxies are made.
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