You live on earth. The earth is part of a planetary lunar system that is part of the larger solar system. The solar system revolves around a single star in the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is home to at least 100 billion stars and maybe as much as 400 billion … and it’s just one galaxy. In a new research article, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of 44 brand new galaxies, each containing an innumerable number of stars, planets, moons and you. Wait, not you, but everything else before that.
The researchers used data from various sources to hunt for previously unnoticed galaxies hiding in an area of space called the Fornax Cluster. The Fornax group is a group of galaxies located about 65 million light-years from Earth and has been a major source of galaxies in the past. In this case, data from multiple surveys and observation campaigns were used to indicate the presence of 44 new galaxies, but this is not like the Milky Way.
There are many different types of galaxies in the universe. Spiral systems like our own are just one type, and each galaxy variant can come in different sizes. These new galaxies are known as UCDs, or ultra-compact dwarf systems. As their name suggests, these galaxies are extremely compact and about 200 light-years wide. By comparison, the Milky Way is thought to be about 100,000 light-years in diameter, giving or taking some lifespan.
Because it is smaller, it also contains fewer stars. It is estimated that UCDs contain about 100 million stars, but this is again a very rough estimate. These ‘small’ galaxies are a relatively recent discovery for scientists, with the first UCDs being classified less than two decades ago. It’s also a little harder to detect than their larger, more impressive counterparts, and therefore they may have been hiding in data already studied.
After searching the available information, the research team had 220 potential UCD candidates. This is a lot, which is why the scientists decided to focus their efforts on the objects that are likely to be UCDs. They eventually found 44 which are probably new galaxies that still needed to be documented, and they are located near the edge of the larger group. According to the researchers, the new galaxies are more than 1170 light-years from the core of the group, which may have made it more difficult to spot in previous research efforts.
“With the deep optical images of the Fornax Deep Survey, combined with public near-infrared data, we visit the UCD population of the Fornax group and for the first time systematically search for UCD candidates up to the virial radius of the galaxy. cluster, ”explain the researchers.
At a distance of about 65 million light-years from Earth, it’s just impressive that we can know that these galaxies exist. Unfortunately, it will be a long time before we have the technology to find out more about them or what they contain.
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See the original version of this article on BGR.com