New galaxy found orbiting the Milky Way

[Spaceception]

Thoughts?

http://www.physics-astronomy.com/2016/04/a-giant-galaxy-orbiting-our-own-just.html?m=1#.VxVgbHrMJnC

[max_creative]

My thoughts: HOW DID WE MISS THIS?!?

[Darnok]

And all models about galaxy movement went to trash

[Spaceception]

15 minutes ago, max_creative said:

My thoughts: HOW DID WE MISS THIS?!?

It seemed to be a very dark galaxy.

[magnemoe]

3 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

It seemed to be a very dark galaxy.

Home galaxy of the dark force, at least its some good news. I would not trust the Jedi's to hand out free ice cream on an very hot day. 

[Bill Phil]

Basically a giant version of the mostly red/yellow Galaxy in our neighborhood. Perhaps they're related....

Maybe it's a bunch of degenerate matter, or matter that hasn't been upset to cause clouds to collapse...

[YNM]

Actually, the paper doesn't say anything on mass. It only say things about stellar density and radius, which, according to the data presented in the paper, only counts horizontal brach and red giant stars.

If someone can integrate their best-fit curve that'd be better.

EDIT : Anyway, here's link to full paper on arXiv : http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.07178

Edited April 19, 2016 by YNM

[cantab]

Low surface brightness. That makes it particularly hard to see against skyglow. Not to mention other celestial objects. Skimming the paper, it seems like they didn't image Crater 2 in the usual sense, but only detected it with sophisticated statistical analysis.

And it's not abnormal that we're still finding Milky Way satellite galaxies. A bunch were found in 2015, and more earlier in the 21st century.

[UmbralRaptor]

5 hours ago, max_creative said:

My thoughts: HOW DID WE MISS THIS?!?

Very low surface brightness. Its absolute magnitude appears to be no higher than a globular cluster (and is likely lower than the brightest ones), and yet it's very roughly 50 times larger in radius. The abstract that was linked to is very helpful.

[fredinno]

5 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Basically a giant version of the mostly red/yellow Galaxy in our neighborhood. Perhaps they're related....

Maybe it's a bunch of degenerate matter, or matter that hasn't been upset to cause clouds to collapse...

Probably a LOT of Dark matter

[Andem]

So Andromeda is going to screw both of us over... damn...

[Spaceception]

11 minutes ago, Andem said:

So Andromeda is going to screw both of us over... damn...

Mega galaxy ftw!!

I kinda want to be cryofreezed so i can see the new galaxy

[wumpus]

17 hours ago, Darnok said:

And all models about galaxy movement went to trash

Certainly the nomenclature needs to be refined.  I don't think you can call something an independent "galaxy" if it is orbiting something else (that is also a galaxy).

Can they measure any sort of Barycenter?  If not, it isn't an orbit and might account for why it wasn't noticed (and throw further confusion on the nomenclature).

[YNM]

They can't tell the true, whole mass of the galaxy. The paper only includes Red Giant and Horizontal Branch stars within the supposed galaxy for it's star count (size calculation), and the images included in the paper are highly processed. Link : http://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.07178v3

Edited April 19, 2016 by YNM

[cubinator]

10 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Mega galaxy ftw!!

I kinda want to be cryofreezed so i can see the new galaxy

Good luck getting someone to move your freezer when the sun explodes.

Edited April 20, 2016 by cubinator

[Spaceception]

5 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Good luck getting someone to move your freezer when the sun explodes.

It won't explode, and I'll put it on TItan

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

It won't explode, and I'll put it on TItan

Good. It'll probably get warmer there when the sun expands into a red giant, and the atmosphere might get blown away. Make sure you bring a space suit!

[Spaceception]

19 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Good. It'll probably get warmer there when the sun expands into a red giant, and the atmosphere might get blown away. Make sure you bring a space suit!

I'll put it in a space ark on a planet in a wide orbit around a red dwarf.

[cubinator]

30 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

I'll put it in a space ark on a planet in a wide orbit around a red dwarf.

Why not just upload your consciousness to the internet? You'd live much longer that way.

Anyways, we should probably be talking about that new galaxy, as it is the true topic of the thread

[Scotius]

Welp, looks like we just found a huge chunk of that fabled Dark Matter. Literally on our space doorstep (on intergalactic scale of course ) Yay Science!

[kerbiloid]

Removing "wow"s, a dwarf radiogalaxy smaller than Magellanic Clouds (as

Quote

Crater 2 is so massive that researchers have already identified it as the fourth largest galaxy orbiting our own

 

).

 

Edited April 20, 2016 by kerbiloid

[cantab]

On 19/04/2016 at 5:00 PM, wumpus said:

I don't think you can call something an independent "galaxy" if it is orbiting something else (that is also a galaxy).

We've been identifying satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, and indeed of other major galaxies, for ages.