Astronomers discover starless galaxy

At the 243rd annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Scientists introduced a newly discovered galaxy that appears to have no stars around it.. Scientists named J0613+52 find the cosmic object by analyzing hydrogen gas in the regions of space where galaxies with low surface brightness (LSB), known for not showing much brightness, are located.

Scientists believe they offer the discovery of perhaps the first galaxy composed of gas, formed shortly after the Big Bang. They explain that if there were no stars around the Milky Way or Andromeda, they would likely be observed with features similar to J0613+52.

As explained in the announcement, the galaxy consists of a cloud of gas commonly found in other normal regions of space but does not contain any stars; The discovery occurred during LSB analyses. Scientists used data collected from the Green Bank Telescope and Green Bank Observatory, as well as the Nançay and Arecibo radio telescopes.

“GBT was accidentally directed to the wrong coordinates and found this object. It’s a galaxy composed only of gas; it has no stars in sight. There may be stars, but we can’t see them. The goal was to determine the gas and dynamic masses of these ultra-diffuse galaxies. To do this, we used multiple instruments and we observe many of these more than once,” said Green Bank Observatory senior scientist Karen O’Neil.

lonely galaxy

The hydrogen detected in J0613+52 has properties similar to those of the spiral galaxy, but radio data from telescopes do not provide any information widely emitted by stars. The lone object was found by chance after one of the scientists made a typo in the coordinates. at the Green Bank radio telescope.

Since there is no trace of stars This also means that the galaxy should not have been subject to any type of gravitational interaction.l. This is a completely different object than scientists have found so far, so they need to study it in depth to confirm the latest observations.

“[O objeto] It does not show star formation as we expect, probably because its gas is very dispersed. It is also too far from other galaxies for any encounter to trigger star formation. J0613+52 appears intact and undeveloped. “This may be our first discovery of a nearby galaxy composed of primordial gas,” adds O’Neil.

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