OneWingedBird
Beloved of Ra
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2003
- Messages
- 15,431
With any luck Phil Plait will come up with the goods on this in a day or two, until then here's a summary from Imperial College London.
"A galaxy a third the size of our own, but extremely faint, has been observed orbiting around the Milky Way.
An international team, including an astronomer from Imperial College London, discovered the massive galaxy when trawling through data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. Despite its size, the galaxy has very few stars, challenging conventional theories of galaxy formation."
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/189023/enormous-ghost-galaxy-spotted-hiding-next/
Seems to have been missed through a combination of very low density/brightness and also as (i think) it's in the zone of avoidance in line with the disc of our own galaxy.
"A galaxy a third the size of our own, but extremely faint, has been observed orbiting around the Milky Way.
An international team, including an astronomer from Imperial College London, discovered the massive galaxy when trawling through data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. Despite its size, the galaxy has very few stars, challenging conventional theories of galaxy formation."
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/189023/enormous-ghost-galaxy-spotted-hiding-next/
Seems to have been missed through a combination of very low density/brightness and also as (i think) it's in the zone of avoidance in line with the disc of our own galaxy.