The Hubble telescope showed the "failed" galaxy
Miscellaneous / / April 25, 2022
It can almost entirely consist of dark matter.
Telescope "Hubble" photographed the ultra-diffuse galaxy GAMA 526784, which looks like a faint spot of light in the picture. This object is located in the constellation Hydra, about four billion light-years from Earth.
Ultradiffuse galaxies such as GAMA 526784 have a number of features. In particular, they can be the size of the Milky Way, but there are 100-1000 times fewer stars in them. This is due to the lack of gas in them, necessary for the formation of stars. Scientists suggest that these may be “failed” ordinary galaxies that could not develop because they lost their gas reserves in the early stages of formation.
The content of dark matter in such galaxies can be both extremely low and extremely high - observed ultradiffuse galaxies with an almost complete absence of dark matter, while others are almost exclusively from it and consisted. Another oddity of this class of galaxies is an anomalous abundance of bright globular clusters, which is not observed in other types of galaxies.
The color image was made from separate images taken in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum. This data will allow astronomers to study this galaxy in high resolution, helping to estimate the size and age of the stars in it.
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