Indian Astronomers Discover A 'Ghost-Like' Galaxy Hiding In Our Cosmic Backyard

Indian astronomers have discovered a galaxy that remained hidden until now. The faint galaxy is a star-forming region and was shrouded by a bigger and brighter galaxy. The most astounding part is perhaps that the faint galaxy is in Milky Way's neighbourhood, situated 136 million light-years away.

A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bengaluru spotted the galaxy while studying a known galaxy NGC6902A that was interacting with this faint galaxy.

PIB

How was the galaxy discovered?

It was first spotted when astronomers saw blue emission in the southwest outer region of the NGC6902A galaxy. Turns out, these emissions were coming from young stars classified as Type O and Type B - one of the biggest and short-lived stars in the galaxy.

When scientists saw excessive light, they probed its cause and found a faint galaxy hiding nearby. This newly discovered galaxy is extremely faint - about ten times fainter than surrounding night sky. Owing to this, it is extremely difficult to spot.

Unsplash

Also read: Hubble Telescope Captures Most Distant Star Situated 28 Billion Light-Years Away

Without advanced optical telescopes, spotting such faint structures in the universe would be virtually impossible. According to astronomers, such faint galaxies make up 15% of all of universe's mass.

When they compared the emissions from the known galaxy with this new one, they found that the former was emitting light from 825 million light-years while the latter was emitting from a distance of 136 million light-years. This meant only one thing - that the blue emissions were in fact coming from a different galaxy.

Hubble

Also read: Scientists Have Found Largest Galaxy Ever: It's 16.3 Million Light Years Huge

The new galaxy has been officially named UVIT J2022, a study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics revealed. This research implies that there could be other fainter galaxies interacting with larger and brighter ones waiting to be discovered.

The research was conducted by Jyoti Yadav, Mousumi Das and Sudhanshu Barway from India, and Francoise Combes from College de France. What do you think about such cosmic discoveries? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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References

Desk, I. T. W. (2022c, April 1). Indian astronomers discover a galaxy hiding in our neighbourhood. It¡¯s forming new stars. India Today.