As if cracking open a cosmic Russian nesting doll, astronomers have peered into the center of the Milky Way and discovered what appears to be a miniature spiral galaxy, swirling daintily around a single large star.
near the dense and dusty galactic center – is about 32 times as massive as the sun and sits within an enormous disk of swirling gas, known as a"protostellar disk". .
But astronomers have never seen one like this before: a galaxy in miniature, orbiting perilously close to the center of our own galaxy.
They found that, if the object followed one specific path, it could have skimmed past the disk about 12,000 years ago, perturbing the dust just enough to result in the vivid spiral shape seen today.
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