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Hubble Reveals a Previously Unknown Dwarf Galaxy Just 7 Million Light Years Away

Posted by timothy on from the hey-neighbor dept.

The L.A. Times reports that the Hubble Space Telescope's ongoing survey work has discovered a dwarf universe a mere 7 million light years away: While only just recently discovered using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, the galaxy known as KKs3 has been around for a long while. Astronomers led by Igor Karachentsev of the Special Astrophysical Observatory in Karachai-Cherkessia, Russia, showed that some 74% of KKs3’s star mass was formed in the universe’s early years, at least 12 billion years ago. Most of the tiny galaxy’s stars are old and dim, making it a fascinating fossil that could help astronomers understand what ancient galactic environments looked like.

12 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Dwarf Universe? by splatacaster · · Score: 4, Funny

    Didn't know we discovered entire tiny universes yet.

    1. Re:Dwarf Universe? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      You should send the submitter an internet about his mistake.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:Dwarf Universe? by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Earh is 50 kiloparsecs from the Large Magellic Cloud, 778 kiloParsecs from the Andromeda Galaxy. And 2 Megaparsecs from this newly discovered galaxy. Apparently. KKs is an isolated spheroidal galaxy-- not a satellite of the Milky way, Andromeda or even Triangulum, nor is it clustered with other dwarf galaxies in the local group.
      The paper says

      Since 2008, only three galaxies had been newly discovered in a spherical shell between radii 1 and 3Mpc around the Local Group. Two of them are dIrrs, UGC 4879 (Kopylov et al. 2008) and Leo P (Giovanelli et al. 2013), and the third one, KK 258 (Karachentsev et al. 2014), belongs to the transition type dTr with minimal but detectable gas and young stars. Here we report the discovery in this volume of a dwarf spheroidal system KKs 3 ([KK2000] 03 = SGC 0224.3–7345 in the nomencla- ture of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database) at a distance of D = 2.12 ± 0.07 Mpc and well removed from any other known galaxy.

      So the interesting feature isn't that it's close. It's that it's distant from any galaxy.

  2. Don't Order From Slashdot Deals by TheNinjaroach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sorry to hijack, but I'm leaving this post (with UID) to warn other Slashdotters to NOT order from Slashdot Deals.

    I asked my girlfriend for the cheap pair of headphones they are selling over there. She received a blank shipment confirmation (no tracking number, no ship date, all basically details missing from a form letter) and then waited two more weeks before following up with customer service. They told her her order still hadn't shipped (19 days after ordering!) but then it was received the very next day.

    What did we receive? A retail package for the headphones... without any headphones on it. All the accessories were still there but somebody ripped the headphones out before shipping the package.

    It's been 22 days and this issue has yet to be resolved. Bottom line: DO NOT order from Slashdot Deals.

    --
    I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
    1. Re:Don't Order From Slashdot Deals by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Irrelevant. This is a tech site with tech news for supposedly nerds. Timothy deserves the mocking he is getting. If you want to pull the dialect number then go post on some obscure news for English history buffs website and not a website which among other things has a readership made up of astronomers.

  3. Re:Missing information by mrsquid0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    RA = 02:24:44.4
    Dec = 73:30:51

    Unfortunately it is a bit too far south to see from Canada.

    --
    Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
  4. Re:Missing information by phozz+bare · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thanks. I was going to inquire about the difficulty of seeing Cassiopeia from Canada, when I found (thanks Wikipedia!) that you had missed the negative sign in the Declination... anyway, apparently this object is located in the constellation Hydrus near the celestial south pole. Why this was so difficult to write in the summary or the linked article is beyond me.

  5. Don't Order From Slashdot Deals by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    If you buy another 3 pairs you'll be entitled to a free Bennet Haselton!

  6. Re:Missing information by Scarletdown · · Score: 2

    Would it be too much to inform the curious readers as to where in the sky this galaxy is located?

    Up? :D

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    This space unintentionally left blank.
  7. Re:I think this can't be real by Bob_Who · · Score: 2

    Just be glad its not porno dwarf galaxies. That is just to hard to "unsee".

  8. Old news is old by Tom+Womack · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm not quite sure why the LA Times is reporting this today, when the galaxy was discovered in 2000 and the preprint of the paper describing the age determination using Hubble data ( arXiv:1411.1674 ) appeared in the Arxiv in November.

    1. Re:Old news is old by quenda · · Score: 2

      I'm not quite sure why the LA Times is reporting this today, when the galaxy was discovered in 2000

      The light took 7 million years to get here. What's a few more?