Astronomers have found twelve Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies in Hydra I cluster.
According to a report published on Sci-News.com by Natali Anderson on 1st June 2021, Astronomers have found twelve Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies in Hydra I Cluster using European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) VLT Survey Telescope.
The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory (eso1119). It is a 2.6m wide-field Optical Survey Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The Astronomers using this telescope discovered 27 Low-Surface Brightness Galaxies. Twelve of these Galaxies they say, are candidates for Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies. They belong to a large group of Galaxies called Hydra I Cluster.
Hydra I Cluster
Hydra Cluster (Abell 1060) is a cluster of Galaxies containing 157 bright Galaxies appearing in the Hydra Constellation. The span of the cluster is about 10 million light-years. It has an high proportion of Dark Matter which is quite unusual. The cluster is part of the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster which is located 158 million light-years from Earth.
Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies
Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies were first discovered in 2015 by Astronomers using Dragonfly Telephoto Array and the 10m Telescope at the W.M.Keck Observatory on Maunakea Hawai’i. They are relatively new classes of Galaxies large as our Milky Way. They have 100 to 1000 times fewer stars than our own Galaxy. This makes them barely visible and difficult to study.
Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies lack star-forming gas and therefore appear almost like a fluffy cosmic cloud. Astronomers speculate that they could be “failed” Galaxies which lost their gas supply early in their lifetime.
There are some theoretical models explaining that Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies are extreme Dwarf Galaxies. Their size could be due to high spins in Dark Matter Halos or to Tidal Interactions.
Source of information Sci-News.
Read more about the discovery here
