Dwarf Galaxies Discovered

d'alz writes "Two new satellite galaxies have been discovered in the Milky Way. These dim dwarf galaxies bring the total number of galaxies in the Milky Way's cosmic neighborhood to a total of 14. Of course, theorists believe there could be a hundred more. The two dwarfs were found in the direction of the constellations Canes Venatici (the hunting dogs) and Bootes (the herdsman), scientists studying the Sloan Digital Sky Survey said in a statement. However, even though these galaxies are presumably quite close, they are difficult to spot, as they are very dim, which is a defining characteristic of dwarf galaxies."

Comments

PC

[Deltaspectre]

It's *NOT* PC to call them that guys!

They prefer size impaired galaxies...

Re:PC

[Spy der Mann]

They prefer size impaired galaxies...

They don't want your help. Remember that NOBODY tosses a dwarf!

Re:PC

[thewiz]

Um, my wife is a dwarf and often corrects people who are PC.
She's been called:
Altitudenly-challenged
Vertically-challenged
Height-challenged
Diminutive
Little lady
Little mom (by kids)
etc.

and she's always quick to say, "I'm short/small! Get over it!"

I'm sure these galaxies feel the same way.

Dim dwarfs?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Surely you mean "challenged little galaxies" not "dim dwarf galaxies".

Freaking bigots...

Re:Dim dwarfs?

[mcsestretch]

They were going to call them the Stupid Midget galaxies but cooler heads prevailed at the last minute.

I've heard this before

[DarthChris]

I remember hearing something about this [b]years[/b] ago. Is this old news or have they found galaxies additional to those already known?

Re:I've heard this before

[porkchop_d_clown]

These are new.

Through various techniques we're building up a more detailed understanding of the shape of our own galaxy - this is easy to do when looking at other galaxies, but quite hard to do for our own - imagine trying to get a detailed map of the human body from inside the stomach.

Since it's hard to tell how far away stars are, what they've been doing is gathering motion and spectrographic maps of them - figuring out which stars are obviously affecting each other, which stars are chemically similar and so on, and building 3d models from these.

It was just a year or two ago we figured out the Milky Way is in the middle digesting another smaller galaxy in the direction of Saggitarius.

Re:I've heard this before

[tverbeek]

And stop using BBcode in your comments. :)

Combined with the almost-a-million ID number, somehow "You must be new here" seems redundant. ;)

Re:I've heard this before

[powerlord]

It was just a year or two ago we figured out the Milky Way is in the middle digesting another smaller galaxy in the direction of Saggitarius.

I hope our galaxy, the Milky Way, doesn't get indigestion then.

Don't worry, Milky Way of Magnesia will fix that right up.

Basic question on naming...

[porkchop_d_clown]

Seeing how these "galaxies" are smaller than many clusters, why are they called "galaxies"?

Is this just another arbitrary thing, like the difference between a "planet" and an "asteroid"?

Re:Basic question on naming...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't answer your question, but I can share my suspicion that the distinction is made based upon such criteria as the trajectory of the little galaxy. If you had a galactic disk with a pretty uniform orbital speed and plane, you'd pretty much conclude that stars in that plane and orbit were original to the formation of the galaxy. But if you find a group of stars that are just way different, going faster and out of the plane, or whose trajectory could be traced to originating outside the galaxy, then you could make the conclusion that this group of stars, though it be smaller than many galactic clusters, originated seperately from the galaxy and are in fact, either their own galaxy, or the remaining remnant of one.

Re:Basic question on naming...

[mazarin5]

There's no exclusiveness there. Clouds and clusters are galaxies, there's no distinction.

Really, the only place you could contest whether something was a galaxy or not would be multiple star systems on the small side and whether or not two galaxies are actually separate on the large side. Really though, multiple star systems move together, so that's not really a question, and most of the stars in a galaxy tend to orbit in the same general direction and in the same plane. If a large grouping of stars moved together in a way that's very eccentric to our galactic plane, even if it orbits our galactic center, then it's likely a minigalaxy.

Oy vey...

[The-Bus]

"These dim dwarf galaxies..."

I know Gimli wasn't particularly clever but I think this is borderline offensive. Lousy dwarfist editors. You deserve a kick in the gloin.

*groan*

Color....

[Churla]

Any of them Red perchance?

And are any of them broadcasting us pictures of Hitler?

So that's why

[sharkey]

I understand now why I don't see Orion in the sky all year round: He's off with Perseus and Hercules drinking and dwarf-galaxy tossing!

Picture here

[Anonymose Coward]

Dwarf galaxy picture.

Re:Cue the D&D/LOTR/Mini-me jokes

[Cheapy]

So Gimli, a Dreugar, and Mini-Me walk into a bar...

Re:dark matter

[budgenator]

Mostly arrogence I'd guess, a "if we haven't seen it yet, it most be un-seeable" kind of a thing. These drawf galaxies are really just a speck of fly shit in the grand scale of things, and comparing them to the missing matter is like comparing mosquitoes to brontosaurses. So we'll just chuckle to ourselves and remember which was the last to bite us in the ass, and how much room there is for little specks of flyshit in the universe; then yell out "Hey , did you look over there yet?", like my wife does after she has "cleaned up" where i left my car keys.