Dr Sarah Sweet from the School of Mathematics and Physics is leading Delegate, a collaborative survey with the Australian National University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics among others, which aims to understand if the evolution of Earth’s home galaxy is typical of what is seen in other parts of the Universe.

“The Milky Way will merge with Andromeda and their respective smaller dwarf galaxies in the next 2.5 billion years and while there has been a lot of research into what’s happening in our Local Group, we don’t know how typical it is,” Dr Sweet said.

Research paper lead, ANU Professor Helmut Jerjen said the researchers were comparing our local galaxy group to other twin-like systems. The research was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.