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Story summary
- Astronomers led by Federico Sestito identified 20 metal-poor stars likely from dwarf galaxy “Loki”, which merged with the Milky Way about 10 billion years ago; simulations of a 1.4 billion-solar-mass dwarf reproduce their orbits.
- Spectroscopic measurements at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope took four hours per star and showed chemistry more clustered than typical halo stars, supporting a dwarf origin.
- The study was published on March 23, 2026 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
