(ORDO NEWS) — Using the FAST radio telescope, Chinese astronomers have discovered a new galaxy, which has been designated FAST J0139+4328.
The galaxy is isolated and has a relatively low stellar mass. Astronomers believe that it is dominated by dark matter.
China‘s FAST is the world‘s largest single-dish radio telescope. Its sensitivity and excellent imaging speed allow astronomers to study compact objects, gaseous galaxies and the interstellar medium.
A team of astronomers led by Jin-Long Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing reports the discovery of a new galaxy using FAST.
First of all, the team has discovered several new clouds of neutral atomic hydrogen in the local universe, based on new data from the FAST extragalactic HI survey.
Among the detected clouds, they identified an isolated cloud, named FAST J0139+4328 according to its coordinates.
Further study of FAST J0139+4328 showed that it is a typical disk galaxy, but with an extremely low absolute magnitude (the upper limit of the B-band absolute magnitude is -10.0 mag) and a stellar mass below 690,000 solar masses.
The dynamical and baryonic masses of FAST J0139+4328 were calculated to be approximately 5.1 and 0.11 billion solar masses, respectively, while the neutral atomic mass of this galaxy’s hydrogen was estimated to be approximately 83 million solar masses.
The astronomers emphasized that the ratio of the dynamical mass to the total baryonic mass for FAST J0139+4328 is about 47 ± 27, which indicates that dark matter dominates baryons in this galaxy.
Overall, the results indicate that FAST J0139+4328 is an isolated, gas-rich dark dwarf galaxy located about 94 million light-years away.
The authors of the paper noted that FAST J0139+4328 appears to have a rotating gaseous disk, but no stars on it.
This, together with the fact that dark matter dominates FAST J0139+4328, may indicate that this dark galaxy is in its very early stages of formation.
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