Friday, August 26, 2016

Scientists have found a galaxy of dark matter – BBC

Research galaxies never cease to amaze astronomers. So, in spite of a significant breakthrough in the technique of producing deep high resolution images, an entire class of objects is fraught with many still unexplored interesting features and presents new surprises

This special class. – galaxies of low surface brightness

galaxy of low surface brightness -. this system, in many ways similar to the “normal” galaxies, but it has a very low surface brightness, even in the most central areas. At this point it is already obvious that the low brightness of the galaxy may be of different shapes and sizes. There are a dwarf and a giant system of low brightness.

In particular, there is an amazing class of giant galaxies, low brightness,

characteristic larger than the size of the Milky Path 10 times!

As such system could be formed, is still not completely clear. The study of these galaxies, in particular, held and Russian scientists. New low-brightness galaxies surprise was in 2014, when Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University and colleagues found in the Coma cluster of 47 galaxies ultra-diffuse low luminance, in size comparable to the size of the Milky Way. These objects had an old stellar population and had a spheroidal shape.

In terms of parameters, this class of objects most resembled dwarf spheroidal galaxies, for example, of the Local Group of galaxies close to the M101. But the impressive size of the ultra-found diffuse galaxies did not allow them to be considered a dwarf. Of particular interest in these galaxies stems from the fact that, judging by the extremely low surface brightness, they have a very small total mass of stars. If the bulk of these objects was just stellar population,

they would be destroyed by the tidal forces of the cluster.

The astronomers decided to conduct detailed studies such galaxies to get an accurate estimate of their weight. To this end, they got the measurement of stellar kinematics of one of the largest ultra-diffuse spheroidal galaxies of the sample – Dragonfly 44. Work was adopted in Astrophysical Journal Letters

The first author of the work of Pieter van Dokkum. He said: “Very soon after the opening, we realized that this galaxy must be much more massive than the eye can see. It is so few stars that it would be torn to pieces if something is holding her together. ” In addition, the astronomers were also deep image of the galaxy. The observations were made at the two telescopes – Gemini and Keck Observatory. Both telescopes are located in Hawaii. Astronomers lucky and monitoring took place with different weather conditions. To obtain reliable spectral data scientists took 33.5 hours of observations, which were carried out over six nights.

Evaluation of the dispersion of stellar velocities of 47 km / s puzzled astronomers. “It is amazing, but the stars are moving at speeds that far exceed expectations for such a dim galaxy. This means that the Dragonfly 44 contains a huge share of invisible masses “, – said study co-author Roberto Abraham of the University of Toronto

The estimated total mass of the galaxy is close to the mass of the Milky Way.. And at a fraction of dark matter accounts 98% within a radius containing the half-luminosity galaxies,

and 99.9% if extrapolated to the much larger virial radius, within which the average density the substance is 200 times higher than the critical density of the universe, the next of cosmological models.

As noted by the authors, a preliminary analysis of the data for other smaller ultra-diffuse galaxies sample shows lower values ​​of the velocity dispersions, indicating smaller dynamic mass.

The discovery of galaxies with such a high content of dark matter is not new, previously located dwarf galaxies, also composed mostly of dark matter.

also, are and giant galaxies of low brightness, in which the mass fraction of dark matter is 95%. However, the work of Pieter van Dokkum and colleagues makes an important contribution to the study of the formation and evolution of galaxies, since this result is difficult to explain in terms of modern ideas about the formation of galaxies, according to which the mass of data galaxies have effectively formed stars.

Puzzle of what mechanism is behind the formation of such unusual objects and how they lost gas – the main “fuel” for the formation of stars, scientists have yet to solve. Note that the detection of these galaxies with a dominant dark mass should help in the study of dark matter – the search for dark matter particles can be carried out in these galaxies

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