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Steven R. Majewski
Assistant Professor of Astronomy
University of Virginia
Astronomer
I grew up near a large city and never paid much attention to the night sky because the city lights created so much light pollution that I couldn't see much but the moon and a few bright stars and planets. At the time, the night sky didn't seem all that interesting.
But two things changed my perspective. One was the excitement of the Apollo moon landing missions, which I watched on TV every chance I could. I'll never forget when my parents took us on a trip to see the Cape Canaveral launch site during the Apollo 11 mission. And then, on my first camping trip in the country as a Boy Scout, I got a chance to see what the sky really looked like when you were at a dark place with no light pollution. I was stunned by the dizzying number of stars visible and the sight of the Milky Way stretching across the pitch-black sky. I immediately worked on and received my astronomy merit badge and have been hooked ever since.
As an astronomer, I have been pursuing the theory that the outer parts of some large galaxies, like our own Milky Way, are actually stolen from other, smaller galaxies through processes of galactic cannibalism. I became interested in this subject when, in the course of my Ph.D. thesis work, I found that a large number of stars in the outer parts of our galaxy were orbiting around the Milky Way backwards. It appears that these backwards-orbiting stars may be the remains of a destroyed satellite of the Milky Way. Now I am looking for other evidence that our Milky Way tears apart small galaxies and "digests" their stars.
Web Links
To learn more about my research, visit the Web site:
