ASTRONOMERS FIND NEW NEW `LOCAL' GALAXY.It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, at least for galaxies. Astronomers have discovered a new, faint galaxy circling our own. The finding brings the number of galaxies in our celestial neighborhood - known as the ``Local Group'' - to about 30. The new galaxy lies about 3 million light years away, in the southern constellation of Antlia. Its discoverers have thus named it the Antlia Galaxy. Mike Irwin Dr. Micheal Irwin is director of the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit and one of the discoverers of the Cetus Dwarf galaxy and the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. of the Royal Greenwich Observatory Royal Greenwich Observatory, astronomical observatory established in 1675 by Charles II of England; formerly known as the Royal Observatory and located at Greenwich, it moved to Herstmonceux Castle, Sussex, in 1946. In the 1990 new headquarters at Cambridge Univ. in England, along with graduate students Alan Whiting Alan Whiting is a British screenwriter who has written for Heartbeat, Wire in the Blood, Steel River Blues and Kingdom (which he also co-created). and George Hau of the University of Cambridge, announced the discovery last week at a British meeting of astronomers in Southampton, England. The astronomers say the Antlia Galaxy may tell them how the Local Group formed and evolved over time. The new galaxy is of a type known as a dwarf galaxy dwarf galaxy A small, dim galaxy, intermediate in size between a regular galaxy and a globular cluster. Like larger galaxies, dwarf galaxies are classified as elliptical, spiral, or irregular based on their shape. because it is faint and small - unlike the Milky Way Milky Way, the galaxy of which the sun and solar system are a part, seen as a broad band of light arching across the night sky from horizon to horizon; if not blocked by the horizon, it would be seen as a circle around the entire sky. and Andromeda galaxies, the two local giants. ``Despite their unassuming appearance, dwarf galaxies hold the key to many questions about the formation, structure and evolution of galaxies,'' Irwin said. The scientists discovered the new galaxy by studying pictures of faint, fuzzy objects no one had yet identified. |
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