relic galaxy tagged posts

A team of scientists, led by the researcher at the IAC and the University of La Laguna (ULL) Sebastién Comerón, has found that the galaxy NGC 1277 does not contain dark matter. This is the first time that a massive galaxy (it has a mass several times that of the Milky Way) does not show evidence for this invisible component of the universe. “This result does not fit in with the currently accepted cosmological models, which include dark matter” explains Comerón.

In the current standard model cosmology massive galaxies contain substantial quantities of dark matter, a type of matter which does not interact in the same way as no...

Upper right: This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy NGC 1277. Background: The galaxy lives near the center of the Perseus cluster of over 1,000 galaxies, located 240 million light-years away from Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Beasley (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias), and P. Kehusmaa

Astronomers have put NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on an Indiana Jones-type quest to uncover an ancient “relic galaxy” in our own cosmic backyard. The very rare and odd assemblage of stars has remained essentially unchanged for the past 10 billion years. This wayward stellar island provides valuable new insights into the origin and evolution of galaxies billions of years ago...