This image visualizes the Milky Way and its surrounding “halo” of stars. Most stars in the Milky Way lie in the disc (like the Sun, for example), but stars from past collisions end up in the halo, a large “cloud” of stars that extends outwards in all directions. These halo stars have been enhanced in this image, but in reality would be very dim compared to the disc. The halo appears messy and “wrinkly” here, a sign that a merger has occurred relatively recently.
(Image: Halo stars: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, T Donlon et al. 2024; Background Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar)
Researchers upend theory about the formation of the Milky Way Galaxy
New findings by Robyn Sanderson and collaborators suggest galaxy’s last major collision was billions of years later than previously thought.
Chonnipha (Jing Jing) Piriyalertsak, a 2023 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences from Bangkok, has been selected as a 2024 Yenching Scholar.
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Penn alum named 2024 Yenching Scholar
Chonnipha (Jing Jing) Piriyalertsak, a 2023 graduate, has been selected as a 2024 Yenching Scholar, with full funding to pursue an interdisciplinary master’s degree in China studies at the Yenching Academy of Peking University in Beijing.
James English (left) and J.D. Porter have been collaborating on the research project for more than three years.
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Measuring readers of romance
Researchers at Penn's Price Lab for Digital Humanities conducted a quantitative analysis of the romance genre, studying thousands of avid readers and the hundreds of thousands of books in their collections in Goodreads
Cheryl Nnadi (left) and Taussia Boadi (right) created Positioned for Success, a 2023 winner of Projects for Progress.
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Positioned for Success
The program, launched by recent College of Arts and Sciences grads Taussia Boadi and Cheryl Nnadi, was a 2023 Projects for Progress winner and provides academic support to middle school students affected by gun violence.
Fourth cohort of Projects for Progress recipients announced
The initiative, run out of the Office of Social Equity and Community, provides University funding up to $100,000 each to Penn teams taking on big social justice issues in the city.
