Astronomers have discovered a galaxy the size of the Milky Way, but composed almost entirely of dark matter. Only one-hundredth percent of the galaxy consists of normal, visible matter ?? stars and planets. 99.9% of the composition of this galaxy is invisible.
No one knows what is made of dark matter, but scientists believe that it exists, because they see the impact of its gravity on other objects in space. Whatever it was, it is almost 80% of the mass of the universe.
The Galaxy, taken spectrograph Gemini © Gemini Observatory | AURA
The dark galaxy was named Dragonfly 44, first found in 2015, using the telephoto range of “Dragonfly” in New Mexico (USA).
Dragonfly 44? ? one of the 47 ultrarasseyannyh or “fluffy” galaxies that Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University (USA) and his colleagues found in the Coma Cluster. Galaxy has been one of the biggest and brightest in the cluster. Although Dragonfly 44 as large as the Milky Way, it emits only 1% of the light of our galaxy.
Van Dokkum and his team realized that the Galaxy Dragonfly 44 ?? very strange. This large galaxy could not remain stable, with so few stars. Gravity would be insufficient, and the stars would simply flew through the universe. Scientists have found that the integrity of the galaxy holds the dark matter, which in the Dragonfly 44 ?? 99,99%.
The team then went to the observatory “Gemini” in Hawaii, to make new pictures Dragonflies 44. They created a color image of the galaxy ?? the picture dull spherical Dragonfly 44 looked like a filthy blot.
New pictures also showed a halo of star clusters, like a halo around the Milky Way. Some researchers believe that the bright halo around galaxies are composed of dark matter. If this is true, it is possible that dark matter may not be perfectly dark.
No comments:
Post a Comment