Galaxies come in many forms, and now we’ve discovered a new type: fluffy and wispy with incredibly few stars.
At 60,000 light-years wide, some of these approach the size of our own Milky Way, yet hold only 1 percent as many stars.
In a collaboration between Maunakea’s giant Keck telescope and the much smaller but more awesomely named Dragonfly Telephoto Array, astronomers have discovered 47 ultra-diffuse, tissue-dense galaxies (UDGs).
They’re so devoid of stars that any observers gazing at the cosmos would enjoy a boring, mostly empty night sky.
These cosmic outliers are so strange that astronomers aren’t sure how they formed. It’s possible the UDGs are failed galaxies that sputtered out of gas, or even bits that were pulled off of larger galaxies.
Even more puzzling is their survival: They were found in the Coma cluster; a cosmic mosh pit buzzing with gobs of dark matter and galaxies zipping about at great speeds.
Given the circumstances, it’s entirely possible that they were warped into their current configurations by the gravitational craziness going on around them.
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