Hidden Galaxies in the Local Universe
Australian Telescope finds Missing
Galaxies on our Doorstep
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Media Release - School of Physics
- The University of New South Wales
Thursday 7th May 1998
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A team of astronomers has discovered a
new population of galaxies, previously mistaken for stars. Their work
is helping to explain how our Universe was formed.
Dr Michael Drinkwater, leader of the
team, explained the discovery at ScienceNOW! the National Science
Forum in Melbourne on Thursday May 7 1998.
"We traditionally assumed that most
of the small round objects seen in the sky were stars and that none
were galaxies.
"Using a revolutionary new instrument
on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, the Two degree Field, we've discovered
that some of these objects are actually a new type of hidden galaxy.
This means that the local universe contains more galaxies than we
thought. We are using the Two degree Field to find how many were
hidden or missing. This will lead to a better understanding of the
history of our Universe.
"So far we've found seven of these galaxies
in a small part of the sky. We think there's over 150,000 more waiting
to be discovered.
"The amazing thing is that these new
galaxies are easy to see and are not very far away, but no-one realised
they were there. A bit embarrassing really. It's only with an instrument
like the Two degree Field which allowed us to check all the stars
that we could find them.
The discovery, recently presented at
an international conference in France, finally confirms a prediction
made 20 years ago that very compact galaxies might be confused with
stars.
Illustrations
Colour transparencies of one of the
newly discovered compact galaxies and a selection of normal galaxies
for comparison are available. More images can be downloaded from
: Hidden
Galaxies in the Local Universe.
Collaborators
- Dr. Steve Phillipps (co-leader; University
of Bristol)
- Dr. Jon Davies (University of Cardiff)
- Dr. Michael Gregg (University of
California)
- Dr. Bryn Jones (University of Bristol)
- Dr. Quentin Parker (Anglo-Australian
Observatory)
- Dr. Elaine Sadler (University of
Sydney)
- Dr. Rodney Smith (University of Cardiff)
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Further Information
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