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Hubble Reveals a Previously Unknown Dwarf Galaxy Just 7 Million Light Years Away 70

Posted by timothy from the hey-neighbor dept.
The L.A. Times reports that the Hubble Space Telescope's ongoing survey work has discovered a dwarf universe a mere 7 million light years away: While only just recently discovered using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, the galaxy known as KKs3 has been around for a long while. Astronomers led by Igor Karachentsev of the Special Astrophysical Observatory in Karachai-Cherkessia, Russia, showed that some 74% of KKs3’s star mass was formed in the universe’s early years, at least 12 billion years ago. Most of the tiny galaxy’s stars are old and dim, making it a fascinating fossil that could help astronomers understand what ancient galactic environments looked like.
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Hubble Reveals a Previously Unknown Dwarf Galaxy Just 7 Million Light Years Away More

Hubble Reveals a Previously Unknown Dwarf Galaxy Just 7 Million Light Years Away

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  • Dwarf Universe? (Score:4, Funny)

    by splatacaster ( 653139 ) on Saturday December 27, 2014 @02:29PM (#48680901)
    Didn't know we discovered entire tiny universes yet.
    • What exactly about the galaxy makes it a dwarf as opposed to a little-verse? Its galactic arms are too long for its body and its core is over sized?!

      Why are not the PC brigade up in arms about this obviously inappropriate reference.

      And since we is 7 million light years "mere". I mean we are not a universe, we are human. Its a long-assed way for us!
      • there is a neat trick that sciencey folks can do called "Make it a jargon term" that can bypass 99% of the PC folks. as fas as 7Mega light years being "mere" well when you are dealing with Billions and Billions then stuff that is only millions is mere.

      • Re:Dwarf Universe? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Saturday December 27, 2014 @05:54PM (#48681747) Journal

        Earh is 50 kiloparsecs from the Large Magellic Cloud, 778 kiloParsecs from the Andromeda Galaxy. And 2 Megaparsecs from this newly discovered galaxy. Apparently. KKs is an isolated spheroidal galaxy-- not a satellite of the Milky way, Andromeda or even Triangulum, nor is it clustered with other dwarf galaxies in the local group.
        The paper says [oxfordjournals.org]

        Since 2008, only three galaxies had been newly discovered in a spherical shell between radii 1 and 3Mpc around the Local Group. Two of them are dIrrs, UGC 4879 (Kopylov et al. 2008) and Leo P (Giovanelli et al. 2013), and the third one, KK 258 (Karachentsev et al. 2014), belongs to the transition type dTr with minimal but detectable gas and young stars. Here we report the discovery in this volume of a dwarf spheroidal system KKs 3 ([KK2000] 03 = SGC 0224.3–7345 in the nomencla- ture of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database) at a distance of D = 2.12 ± 0.07 Mpc and well removed from any other known galaxy.

        So the interesting feature isn't that it's close. It's that it's distant from any galaxy.

    • You should send the submitter an internet about his mistake.

      • You should send the submitter an internet about his mistake.

        Well this is really a problem for the editor. Not that Timothy would know what to do with an internet.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The submitter is probably a well-meaning English major who wanted to avoid repetition by replacing "galaxy" with a "synonym".

    • I think that's the vendor which provided the costumes and props for the original "Wizard of Oz" film.

    • I suspect that the original journalist (OK, almost certainly not "original", in any sense ; the most proximate journalist in the chain from submitter to the scientists who originally did the work) is mis-using a literary flourish from a century or so ago when what we now call "galaxies" were frequently described as "island universes."

      This was before Hubble (the guy for whom the Hubble Space Telescope was named) demonstrated that
      (1) other galaxies are far, far further away than most clouds of stars seen at

  • Isn't the Hubble past end-of-life? (per specs) Simply amazing. The Hubble telescope is like my old Jeep. Old technology, not much to look at, lots of dented/squeaky bits, but it just keeps ticking without much maintenance.

  • Don't Order From Slashdot Deals (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheNinjaroach ( 878876 ) on Saturday December 27, 2014 @02:57PM (#48681029)
    Sorry to hijack, but I'm leaving this post (with UID) to warn other Slashdotters to NOT order from Slashdot Deals.

    I asked my girlfriend for the cheap pair of headphones they are selling over there. She received a blank shipment confirmation (no tracking number, no ship date, all basically details missing from a form letter) and then waited two more weeks before following up with customer service. They told her her order still hadn't shipped (19 days after ordering!) but then it was received the very next day.

    What did we receive? A retail package for the headphones... without any headphones on it. All the accessories were still there but somebody ripped the headphones out before shipping the package.

    It's been 22 days and this issue has yet to be resolved. Bottom line: DO NOT order from Slashdot Deals.

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      I wonder if it's the same editors who don't know the difference between a galaxy and a universe who are handling your shipping order.

      Thanks for the heads up.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        Originally the Milky Way was the Universe and when other galaxies were discovered they were also called universes and this use persisted in some dialects of English.

        • Irrelevant. This is a tech site with tech news for supposedly nerds. Timothy deserves the mocking he is getting. If you want to pull the dialect number then go post on some obscure news for English history buffs website and not a website which among other things has a readership made up of astronomers.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            I'll assume it was just a quote.

            • Still not okay. If it was a quote and written in an unexpected way then it's the editor's job to make readers aware of it by way of explanation or at least a [Sic]. Either way it makes no sense that the title and first sentence are inconsistent.

    • Don't Order From Slashdot Deals (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you buy another 3 pairs you'll be entitled to a free Bennet Haselton!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        Well since we haven't invented human cloning yet - though I can't wait to hear Bennet Haselton's opinion on the matter - that should be the one and only right? I'll take all four pairs of headphones, delivery to the galaxy known as KKs3. Warp speed delivery please, that'll be 7 million years of blissful silence before his radio signals reach earth.

    • Somewhere, there's an shipping and receiving clerk jamming out to some awesome tunes on his new headphones!

    • Sorry to hijack, but I'm leaving this post (with UID) to warn other Slashdotters to NOT order from Slashdot Deals.

      Don't worry, everyone else found cheaper prices elsewhere on everything they carry which is interesting, I know I did.

  • They want us to think there needs to be a whole new particle, eh? TFS makes it seem like the galaxy is just slightly dim, so, are we just having tons of mini clusters being washed out of our instruments' views?

  • Would it be too much to inform the curious readers as to where in the sky this galaxy is located?

    • Re:Missing information (Score:5, Informative)

      by mrsquid0 ( 1335303 ) on Saturday December 27, 2014 @03:15PM (#48681079) Homepage

      RA = 02:24:44.4
      Dec = 73:30:51

      Unfortunately it is a bit too far south to see from Canada.

      • Re:Missing information (Score:4, Informative)

        by phozz bare ( 720522 ) on Saturday December 27, 2014 @03:40PM (#48681207)

        Thanks. I was going to inquire about the difficulty of seeing Cassiopeia from Canada, when I found (thanks Wikipedia!) that you had missed the negative sign in the Declination... anyway, apparently this object is located in the constellation Hydrus near the celestial south pole. Why this was so difficult to write in the summary or the linked article is beyond me.

        • Yes, the dec should be -73:30:51. Sorry about the cut-and-paste error. The southern sky seems to have all of the good galaxies.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Somewhere in the back of a crowded elevator. Tha's why it was so hard to spot.

    • From the fucking paper [oxfordjournals.org]

      The low surface brightness object KKs 3 with J2000 coordinates: RA = 02h24m44.s4, Dec. = â'73*30'51" was detected in full sky surveys by Karachentseva & Karachentsev (2000) and Whiting, Hau & Irwin (2002) as a potential dSph galaxy neighbouring the Local Group.

      • Fucking Slashdot. You'd think Unicode was tricky. Dec. = -73*30'51"

        • How did you make that star being a superscript? or did you actually use html for that, and if so, why not using the degrees sign then?

      • Thanks. My point was that Slashdot, as well as the linked article, failed to report the most interesting and relevant information pertaining to the subject. That you had to seek the scientific paper and download a 2.2 MB document to obtain this information merely strengthens my argument. Also, like mrsquid0 before you, you broke the minus sign. :)

    • Would it be too much to inform the curious readers as to where in the sky this galaxy is located?

      Up? :D

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        Would it be too much to inform the curious readers as to where in the sky this galaxy is located?

        Up? :D

        Nice guess, but wrong, for you Northern-hemisphere residents. So its a bit hard for you to see without a neutrino-camera.

  • First you classify them as "Dwarf" and then you go on to say things like "Most of the tiny galaxy’s stars are old and dim, making it a fascinating fossil that could help astronomers understand what ancient galactic environments looked like."

    KKs3's reply was "Get off my lawn, you damn dirty apes!"

  • And it's a great day for astronomy folks... what? It's a typo? I'm shocked, shocked to find that an article on Slashdot was not capably edited prior to submission.

  • Old news is old (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tom Womack ( 8005 ) <tom@womack.net> on Saturday December 27, 2014 @06:04PM (#48681795) Homepage

    I'm not quite sure why the LA Times is reporting this today, when the galaxy was discovered in 2000 and the preprint of the paper describing the age determination using Hubble data ( arXiv:1411.1674 ) appeared in the Arxiv in November.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      I'm not quite sure why the LA Times is reporting this today, when the galaxy was discovered in 2000

      The light took 7 million years to get here. What's a few more?

  • Then let's go for Spring break!

  • What version of Android does it run?

  • I was watching the bubble universe episode of Doctor Who while I read that. Blew my freakin mind lol.
  • Captain, I'm serious, help me. Light needs 7 mln. years to reach Hubble, right? How can it see it before that time? Wormhole? Dont mark me troll please, i really don't get it

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