Eric Peng News Today

The observed galaxies are being disrupted and stripped of their outer layers, transforming them into fossil-dense, ultra-compact dwarf galaxies.

The research team has observed the various stages in the formation of UCDs for the first time, said Wang Kaixiang, first author of the study, who is also a doctoral candidate at Peking University.

Using the Gemini North Telescope researchers spotted galactic cannibalism near a large grouping of thousands of galaxies nearby to Earth.

When tiny dwarf galaxies age and begin to erode away, they can transform into an even smaller and more dense shape, called an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy.

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