noaoann18022 — Announcement

Ghostly Backyard Giant Plays Hide-and-Seek

20 November 2018

Astronomers have discovered a large, extremely diffuse galaxy companion to the Milky Way. As big as the Large Magellanic Cloud but 10,000 times fainter, the galaxy has eluded us until now because of its faint, “ghostly” appearance and its hiding place behind the disk of the Milky Way. The discovery was made with the Gaia satellite and archival data from DECam on the CTIO Blanco telescope. Astronomers want to know: is this galaxy an oddball?...or one of many “ghostly” companions yet to be found?

Long press or hover your mouse over the image above to view a labeled version.

Links

• Read more from University of Cambridge.