Astronomers spot large stream of stars between galaxies

To their shock, a global workforce of researchers has found an enormous and very faint stream of stars between galaxies. Whereas streams are already recognized in our personal galaxy and in close by galaxies, that is the primary time {that a} stream working between galaxies has been noticed. It’s the largest stream detected up to now. The astronomers have revealed their findings within the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The primary observations have been made with astronomer Michael Wealthy’s comparatively small 70-centimeter telescope in California (United States of America). Subsequent, the researchers targeted the 4.2-meter William Herschel telescope (La Palma, Spain) on the world. After picture processing, they noticed an especially faint stream greater than 10 occasions the size of our Milky Method. The stream seems floating in the course of the cluster setting, not related to any galaxy particularly. The researchers have named it the Big Coma Stream.

“This large stream crossed our path by coincidence,” explains lead researcher Javier Román. He’s affiliated with the College of Groningen (the Netherlands) and the College of La Laguna in Tenerife (Spain). “We have been learning halos of stars positioned round giant galaxies.”

The invention of the Big Coma Stream is exceptional as a result of it’s a reasonably fragile construction amid a hostile setting of mutually attracting and repelling galaxies. Co-author Reynier Peletier (College of Groningen, the Netherlands) explains, “In the meantime, we have now been in a position to simulate such enormous flows within the laptop. We due to this fact look forward to finding extra of them. For instance, if we search with the long run 39-meter ELT and when Euclid begins producing knowledge.”

With giant future telescopes, the researchers not solely hope to find new large streams. In addition they wish to zoom in on the Big Coma Stream itself. “We’d love to watch particular person stars in and close to the stream and study extra about darkish matter,” says Peletier.

The Coma Cluster is likely one of the best-studied clusters of galaxies. It accommodates 1000’s of galaxies at a distance of about 300 million light-years from Earth within the course of the northern constellation Coma Berenices. In 1933, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky confirmed that the galaxies within the cluster transfer too quick should you solely take the quantity of seen matter under consideration. He discovered that there have to be darkish matter that retains issues collectively. The precise nature of darkish matter continues to be unknown.