According to a press release from Yale University, a team led by one of their astronomers has found "the least luminous, most dark matter-filled galaxy known to exist."
The dwarf galaxy, called Segue 1, gives off only a faint glow lit by a few hundred stars as it orbits the Milky Way.
"But despite its small number of visible stars, Segue 1 is nearly a thousand times more massive than it appears, meaning most of its mass must come from dark matter."
According to the press release:
"It’s only recently that astronomers have discovered just how prevalent these dwarf satellite galaxies are, thanks to projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which imaged large areas of the nighttime sky in greater detail than ever before. In the past two years alone, the number of known dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way has doubled from the dozen or so brightest that were discovered during the first half of the twentieth century."
Fermilab processes and hosts data for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. (Read more about SDSS in this symmetry article.)
The team will publish their results in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ).
