An international research team including the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan used the astronomical supercomputer “Aterui II” at the Mizusawa VLBI Observatory (Oshu City) to derive a scenario for changes that occurred near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The simulation predicts that the star formation will continue explosively in the center of the “bar structure” near the center, and the flow will suddenly stop in other areas. The fluctuations are thought to be ‘recorded’ in the form of different stellar age compositions in different regions, and future observations are awaited.
The Milky Way galaxy is disk-shaped, and it is known that there is a structure in which fixed stars gather in a bar-like shape over a distance of regarding 30,000 light years near the center. At the center of the bar-shaped structure, there is also a region called the “core bulge” where stars are concentrated, but the evolutionary process and history are unknown.
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For the full article, please see the September 25 issue of the Iwate Nippo.