National Optical Astronomy Observatory | 2015 Nov 23
[c][attachment=0]NGFS-tile1-dwarfs_withmoon_HD.jpg[/attachment][/c][hr][/hr]An astonishing number of faint low surface brightness dwarf galaxies recently discovered in the Fornax cluster of galaxies may help to solve the long-standing cosmological mystery of “The Missing Satellites”. The discovery, made by an international team of astronomers led by Roberto Muñoz and Thomas Puzia of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, was carried out using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the 4-m Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). CTIO is operated by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).
Computer simulations of the evolution of the matter distribution in the Universe predict that dwarf galaxies should vastly outnumber galaxies like the Milky Way, with hundreds of low mass dwarf galaxies predicted for every Milky Way-like galaxy. The apparent shortage of dwarf galaxies relative to these predictions, “the missing satellites problem,” could imply that the cosmological simulations are wrong or that the predicted dwarf galaxies have simply not yet been discovered. The discovery of numerous faint dwarf galaxies in Fornax suggests that the “missing satellites” are now being found.
The discovery, recently published in the Astrophysical Journal, comes as one of the first results from the Next Generation Fornax Survey (NGFS), a study of the central 30 square degree region of the Fornax galaxy cluster using optical imaging with DECam and near-infrared imaging with ESO’s VISTA/VIRCam. The Fornax cluster, located at a distance of 62 million light-years, is the second richest galaxy cluster within 100 million light-years after the much richer Virgo cluster. ...
Unveiling a Rich System of Faint Dwarf Galaxies in the Next Generation Fornax Survey - Roberto P. Munoz et al
- Astrophysical Journal 813(1):L15 (2015 Nov 01) DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/813/1/L15
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1510.02475 > 08 Oct 2015