(ORDO NEWS) — Surrounding our Milky Way galaxy are over 60 dwarf galaxies, some of which deserve special attention.
So, now you will learn about the dwarf galaxy in the Draco (hereinafter referred to as CGVD), which is located at a distance of about 260,000 light years from Earth.
The image (above) shows the entire CGVD, which looks like an open star cluster somewhere on the outskirts of the Milky Way.
But still, before you is an independent dwarf spheroidal galaxy (a galaxy of almost spherical shape), which is at an angle of 34.6 degrees to the galactic plane of the Milky Way.
The CGVD is about 10 billion years old, making it about 3.4 billion years younger than the Milky Way.
This, by the way, explains why our Galaxy was able to evolve to its current state, while the KGVD – and others like it – were “satisfied with leftovers”, which are clots of gas that went to form stars.
KGVD is a place of concentration of ancient stars, the age of which approximately coincides with the age of the galaxy.
There are also younger stars in CGVD, which are the product of a sudden and short star formation that happened about 2-3 billion years ago.
Usually, star formation is associated with supernova explosions (explosions of some massive stars) or with a strong gravitational influence of some large objects (for example, the influence of a nearby galaxy).
However, we cannot say with certainty what caused the explosive and very short star formation in KGVD.
The total luminosity of the KGVD is only 200,000 times that of our Sun , which is impressively low for an independent galaxy.
For comparison, the luminosity of the star Betelgeuse is almost 126,000 times greater than the luminosity of the Sun. This makes the KGVD one of the faintest dwarf galaxies that astronomers have ever identified.
KGVD is one of the key goals for studying such a phenomenon as “dark matter”, which is a “hidden mass” that could explain the features of the movement of some celestial bodies that deviate from the laws of celestial mechanics.
In other words, some celestial bodies sometimes entire galaxies do not behave the way they should, given only the observed mass; there is something invisible, but presented in huge quantities – the total mass-energy of the observable Universe is 27% dark matter.
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