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IMAGE: This illustration imagines what the distant object nicknamed Farfarout might look like in the outer reaches of our Solar System. The most distant object yet discovered in our Solar System,. view more
Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva
With the help of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF s NOIRLab, and other ground-based telescopes, astronomers have confirmed that a faint object discovered in 2018 and nicknamed Farfarout is indeed the most distant object yet found in our Solar System. The object has just received its designation from the International Astronomical Union.
Farfarout was first spotted in January 2018 by the Subaru Telescope, located on Maunakea in Hawai i. Its discoverers could tell it was very far away, but they weren t sure exactly how far. They needed more observations.
Astronomers Detect Tremendous Amount of Dark Matter in Dwarf Satellite Galaxy
Scientists have discovered that a small galaxy called Tucana II has a much stronger gravitational pull than expected, which means it is likely home to a large amount of dark matter.
Just as the moon orbits the Earth, many satellite galaxies are orbiting our Milky Way. Tucana II is one of them.
These small galaxies, called dwarf galaxies, are thought to be relics of galaxies formed in the beginning of the universe.
Tucana II is an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy about 163,000 light-years from Earth. To astronomers’ surprise, although Tucana II is small, its gravitational pull can be seen very far from its center, indicating that the dwarf galaxy has a tremendous amount of dark matter within.
Our sun is travelling around the center of the Milky Way at 220 kilometers per second, says Gerry Gilmore with the Institute of Astronomy at the the University of Cambridge, referring to the fact that our Milky Way Galaxy lies inside a sphere, or “halo”, of dark matter that extends out far beyond the luminous Galactic disk, surrounded by a spheroidal halo of old stars and globular clusters, of which 90% lie within 100,000 light-years of the Galactic Center. “If there were no dark matter there, adds Gilmore, if there were just stars, we would be travelling at a ‘mere’ 150 km per second,” Gilmore adds.
Astronomers find origins of galactic cannibalism with discovery of ancient dark matter halo By Sophie Lewis Galaxy without dark matter
Astronomers have detected what they believe to be one of the earliest instances of galactic cannibalism when one galaxy consumes one of its smaller neighbors in an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy called Tucana II. The findings stem from the discovery of an ancient dark matter halo, located in a galaxy 163,000 light years from Earth.
Tucana II is just one of dozens of dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. They are thought to be artifacts left over from the first galaxies in the universe and Tucana II is among the most primitive of them.