The Milky Way disk consists of two prominent components—a thick, alpha-rich, low-metallicity component and a thin, metal-rich, low-alpha component. External galaxies have been shown to contain thin- and thick-disk components, but whether distinct components in the [α/Fe]–[Z/H] plane exist in other Milky Way-like galaxies is not yet known. We present Very Large Telescope (VLT)—Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) observations of UGC 10738, a nearby, edge-on Milky Way-like galaxy. We demonstrate through stellar population synthesis model fitting that UGC 10738 contains alpha-rich and alpha-poor stellar populations with similar spatial distributions to the same components in the Milky Way. We discuss how the finding that external galaxies also contain chemically distinct disk components may act as a significant constraint on the formation of the Milky Way’s own thin and thick disk.

银河系盘由两个突出的部分组成——一个厚的、富含 alpha 的低金属成分和一个薄的、富含金属的、低 alpha 的成分。外部星系已被证明包含薄盘和厚盘成分，但 [ α/Fe]–[Z/H] 平面是否存在于其他类银河系中尚不清楚。我们展示了甚大望远镜 (VLT) - 多单元光谱探索器 (MUSE) 对 UGC 10738 的观测，这是一个附近的、类似银河系的边缘星系。我们通过恒星群合成模型拟合证明，UGC 10738 包含与银河系中相同成分具有相似空间分布的富含α 和缺乏α 的恒星群。我们讨论了外部星系也包含化学上不同的盘状成分的发现如何成为银河系自身薄而厚盘形成的重要制约因素。