Two dwarf galaxies found near Milky Way

[telfrow]

<b>Star systems hard to spot despite closeness because they're so dim</b><br /><br /><i>Two dim dwarf galaxies are the Milky Way's newest-known galactic companions, astronomers studying a vast swath of the sky reported on Monday.<br /><br />This brings the total number of dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way's cosmic neighborhood to 14. But theorists believe there could conceivably be hundreds more.<br /><br />The two newly detected dwarfs were found in the direction of the constellations Canes Venatici (the hunting dogs) and Bootes (the herdsman), scientists studying the Sloan Digital Sky Survey said in a statement.<br /><br />The little galaxy found in Canes Venatici is about 640,000 light-years from the sun, a stone's throw in cosmic terms. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km), the distance light travels in a year. The dwarf found in Bootes is about the same distance from the sun.<br /><br />Even though they are close, these galaxies were hard to spot because they were so dim, a defining characteristic of dwarf galaxies. The new galaxy in Bootes is the faintest discovered, with a total luminosity of 100,000 suns.<br /><br />Some astronomers theorize that there should be hundreds of clumps of so-called cold dark matter — slow-moving subatomic particles left over from the earliest period of the universe — orbiting the Milky Way, which contains our own solar system.</i><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[rogers_buck]

Sure, and how are they supposed to know that dwarfs live there?<br />

 

[derekmcd]

They prefer "little aliens" <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div> </div><br /><div><span style="color:#0000ff" class="Apple-style-span">"If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson</span></div> </div>