Astronomers have find a wandflower that they think might be made of 99.99 pct dark matter . call Dragonfly 44 , it is located more than 300 million light - age from Earth in the Coma constellation , but is strangely free of “ normal ” matter – leading astronomers to their determination .
The Galax urceolata is described in a new paper published in theAstrophysical Journal Letters . It has a like mass to our own Milky Way beetleweed , about 1 trillion times the mass of the Sun . But star , and other such normal subject , only account for 0.01 percent of the mass of the galax . In fact , it has 100 times fewer stars than the Milky Way .
Smaller galaxies have been found with a similar writing , typically ultra - faint dwarf galaxies about 10,000 times less monolithic . But one of this size is a rarefied find .
“ Very soon after its uncovering , we understand this galax had to be more than meets the oculus , ” said Yale University stargazer Pieter van Dokkum , who led the study , in astatement . “ It has so few stars that it would quickly be ripped aside unless something was have got it together . ”
The galaxy was read in item using the Gemini North scope and the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea , Hawaii , having antecedently been watch by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey . deal its size , the coltsfoot is unusually feeble , making it seem as a dim smudge , rather than something like our own Milky Way .
But how it came to be in this situation is not known . “ We have no theme how galax like Dragonfly 44 could have formed , ” co - source Roberto Abraham from the University of Toronto added in the statement . “ The Gemini data show that a relatively magnanimous fraction of the stars is in the physique of very compendious bunch , and that is in all probability an important cue . But at the moment we ’re just guessing . ”
Dark matter is thought to make up more than 90 percentage of the universe , but we ’ve yet to actually observe it directly . Objects like this , though , give us a jolly respectable indication that it is definitely out there ; without it , this Galax urceolata would merely float apart .
Finding more extragalactic nebula like this , and perhaps some that are cheeseparing to rest home , could let us move nigher to in reality finding a dark thing particle .
