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The Hubble telescope still has many surprises to deliver. During an observation mission, the device detected a galaxy hitherto unknown to astronomers.
While the Hubble telescope was carrying out an observation mission focused on a globular cluster, it captured another unexpected object: a small galaxy called Bedin I, located about 30 million light-years away from us. This bademblage of cosmic stars, gases and dust could tell us more about the beginnings of our Universe.
A dwarf galaxy
It is by turning its mirrors towards the globular cluster NGC 6752 that the Hubble telescope has detected this new neighbor. "We report the discovery of Bedin I, a spherical dwarf galaxy too weak and too close to the heart of NGC 6752 for being detected in previous studies", Announce the researchers.
Bedin is barely 3,000 light-years wide (the Milky Way stretches for no less than 100,000 light-years), and its brightness is about 1,000 times lower than that of our galaxy. Normally, spheroidal dwarf galaxies are badociated with larger galaxies, but it does not appear to be the case for Bedin I, which is 2 million light-years away from the most potential host galaxy. near, NGC 6744.
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As old as the world
Thanks to its light spectrum, the researchers were able to establish that Bedin I possessed a very low concentration of metals. These are created through the life process of stars and are propagated through the Universe only when these stars die, suggesting that Bedin I would have a very old population of stars.
The team estimates that the galaxy would go back to 13 billion years, barely 800 million years before the Big Bang. It could therefore serve as a cosmic time capsule for astronomers wishing to study the early years of our cosmos. The distance to Bedin I and its low brightness make it all the more exceptional. After 30 years of activity, the Hubble telescope definitely has many surprises to deliver.
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