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Unveiling the Secret of a Virgo Dwarf Galaxy
May 03, 2000Dwarf galaxies may not be as impressive in appearance as their larger brethren, but they are at least as interestingfrom a scientific point of view. And sometimes they may have hidden properties that will only be found by means of careful observations, probing the signals of their stars at the faintest level. Such as the entirely unexpected, well developed spiral structure within an otherwise seemingly normal dwarf elliptical galaxy!
This is the surprise result of a new study by a team of astronomers, headed by Helmut Jerjen from the Australian National University (Canberra) who obtained detailed observations with the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the dwarf galaxy IC 3328 in the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, some 50 million light-years away.Dwarf galaxies are present in all major clusters of galaxies and dominate by numbers in the universe. They may contain a few (tens of) millions of stars, as compared to galaxies of normal size with hundreds of billions of stars.
Using the FORS1 multi-mode instrument mounted at the first8.2-m VLT Unit telescope, ANTU, the astronomers observed aseries of dwarf elliptical galaxies in the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, inthe constellation of that name (The Virgin).In the case of the seemingly inconspicuous dwarf galaxy IC 3382, the astronomers made an amazing discovery. When the best fitting model was removed from the observed image,a neat and regular spiral structure appeared in the residual image!
Nothing like this has ever been seen before in a dwarf elliptical galaxy. The light associated with the spiral constitutes a 3% modulation of the surface brightness. To see this effect at all, requires the excellent image quality of FORS1 and ANTU.
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Nothing like this has ever been seen before in a dwarf elliptical galaxy. The light associated with the spiral constitutes a 3% modulation of the surface brightness. To see this effect at all, requires the excellent image quality of FORS1 and ANTU.
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
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Iowa State researchers contribute to discovery of gamma rays from starburst galaxy
Iowa State University astrophysicists contributed to the recent discovery that a galaxy quickly creating new stars is also a source of high energy gamma rays.
Starburst galaxy sheds light on longstanding cosmic mystery
An international collaboration that includes scientists from the University of Delaware's Bartol Research Institute in the Department of Physics and Astronomy has discovered very-high-energy gamma rays in the Cigar Galaxy (M82), a bright galaxy filled with exploding stars 12 million light years from Earth.
NASA's Fermi Telescope Detects Gamma-Ray From
Nearby galaxies undergoing a furious pace of star formation also emit lots of gamma rays, say astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
Shedding light on the cosmic skeleton
"Matter is not distributed uniformly in the Universe," says Masayuki Tanaka from ESO, who led the new study. "In our cosmic vicinity, stars form in galaxies and galaxies usually form groups and clusters of galaxies. The most widely accepted cosmological theories predict that matter also clumps on a larger scale in the so-called 'cosmic web', in which galaxies, embedded in filaments stretching between voids, create a gigantic wispy structure."
Blast from the past gives clues about early universe
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope have gained tantalizing insights into the nature of the most distant object ever observed in the Universe -- a gigantic stellar explosion known as a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB).
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