noao9901 — Comunicado científico
Astronomers Discover New Galaxy in the Local Group
6 Enero 1999: Astronomers George H. Jacoby and Taft E. Armandroff of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories in Tucson, Arizona, and James E. Davies of The Johns Hopkins University announced today their discovery of a new galaxy in The Local Group, the group of galaxies within 4 million light-years of our own Milky Way. The new galaxy is the second one that the team has found in the past year by using new computer enhancement techniques applied to 10-year old photographs of the sky. Small galaxies of the type found by Jacoby and collaborators are the most common type of galaxy in the universe, yet the region around the Milky Way Galaxy's big brother, the spiral galaxy in Andromeda, had been thought to be highly deficient of these "dwarf" galaxies before the team began their search. The census of the Local Group, though, is now as high as 43 galaxies, meaning that our neighborhood may not be as unusual as was previously thought.