Though the stars have been assimilated by the Milky Way, their anomalous motion is a relic of the galaxy that they grew up in. These streams are the torn-apart shreds of a devoured galaxy. Rockosi and her colleagues have identified several streams of stars that are moving at a different velocity from the surrounding stars. Instead of a relatively placid whirlpool of gas that condensed and formed a spiral of stars, we now know that the Milky Way has been a voracious feeder on smaller, nearby galaxies. Rockosi has already found enough clues to completely change astronomers' view of the Milky Way. You have to piece together the clues and tell a story. But you can't see what the Milky Way looked like 5 or 10 billion years ago through any telescope. She studies the history and structure of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, as an astronomy professor at UC Santa Cruz, Rockosi, 40, has the opportunity to practice this kind of deduction on a regular basis. This was my first taste of what it's like to do science." We have to tell a story based on very limited and indirect observations. "It's the kind of detective work that we have to do as astronomers, because we can't go out and poke at the things we observe. Even if she couldn't see the gap directly, the reappearance of the star proved that it was there. One night, she saw a star disappear as it passed behind the rings of Saturn and then wink at her through a gap in the rings. On Friday nights,while her high school classmates were going to parties, Connie Rockosi enjoyed a different kind of celebration: star parties at her local astronomy club in Cranford, New Jersey.
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