Messier 81 galaxy tagged posts

The New, Improved Dragonfly is a Galactic Gas Detector

This image zooms in on a newly forming tidal dwarf galaxy, which appears like a clump of gas at the edge of the disk of the M82 galaxy. Red regions are emissions from ionized gas. (Courtesy of the Dragonfly telescope team)

The Dragonfly telescope is undergoing a metamorphosis. For the past decade, the Dragonfly Telephoto Array — designed by Yale’s Pieter van Dokkum and the University of Toronto’s Roberto Abraham and located in New Mexico — has conducted groundbreaking science by detecting faint starlight within dimly lit parts of the night sky. The telescope uses clusters of telephoto lenses to create images, much the way a dragonfly’s eyes gather visual data.

The telescope has spotted previously unseen “fluffy” galaxies, diffuse dwarf galaxies, and galaxies with little or no dark m...

Read More