Astronomers from the University of Cambridge have discovered Nine Dwarf planet orbiting around the milky way in the northern Hemisphere. It is the largest number ever discovered at once. The Nine Satellites includes 3 minute galaxies. These nine galaxies were found near the large and small Magnetic cloud in orbit around the Milky way.
Main objects of Research is to study the mysteries behind the dark matters- that uphold the Galaxy together.
These newly discovered objects are
- a billion times dimmer than the Milky Way
- a million times less massive.
Since they contain up to 99 percent dark matter and just one percent observable matter, dwarf galaxies are ideal for testing whether existing dark matter models are correct. Dark matter — which makes up 25 percent of all matter and energy in our universe — is invisible, and only makes its presence known through its gravitational pull.
The closest is about 95,000 light years away, while the most distant is more than a million light years away.
According to the team, three of the discovered objects are definite dwarf galaxies while the others could be either dwarf galaxies or globular clusters — objects with visible properties similar to dwarf galaxies but not held together with dark matter.
The Cambridge findings were released with the results of a separate survey by astronomers with the Dark Energy Survey headquartered at the US Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. .Both teams used the publicly available data extracted during the first year of the Dark Energy Survey to carry out their analysis.The Dark Energy Survey is supported by funding from the STFC, the US Department of Energy Office of Science; the National Science Foundation; funding agencies in Spain, Brazil, Germany and Switzerland; and the participating institutions.
“The discovery of so many satellites in such a small area of the sky was completely unexpected,” said Sergey Koposov from the Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy and the study’s lead author.
Dark Energy Survey:
- The Dark Energy Survey is a five-year effort to photograph a large portion of the southern sky in unprecedented detail.
- Its primary tool is the Dark Energy Camera, which – at 570 megapixels – is the most powerful digital camera in the world, able to see galaxies up to eight billion light years from Earth.
- Built and tested at Fermilab, the camera is now mounted on the four-metre Victor M Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Andes Mountains in Chile.
- The camera includes five precisely shaped lenses, the largest nearly a yard across, designed and fabricated at University College London (UCL) and funded by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
