Astronomers Discover Potential ‘Dark Galaxy’ Near the Milky Way

Astronomers process test images at Rubin Observatory

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has begun generating test images of the night sky, thanks to the Simonyi Survey Telescope and its giant camera as well as a data management team that includes scientists from the University of Washington. Team members started taking on-sky engineering data with Rubin’s LSST Camera on April 15, according to an update posted to an online forum for the Rubin Observatory research community by Keith Bechtol, a p…

New Form Of Dark Matter Could Solve Decades-Old Milky Way Mystery - Data Intelligence

Astronomers have long been puzzled by two strange phenomena at the heart of our galaxy. First, the gas in the central molecular zone (CMZ), a dense and chaotic region near the Milky Way’s core, appears to be ionized (meaning it is electrically charged because it has lost electrons) at a surprisingly high rate. Second, telescopes have detected a mysterious glow of gamma rays with an energy of 511 kilo-electronvolts (keV) (which corresponds to the…

Astronomers Discover Potential ‘Dark Galaxy’ Near the Milky Way

Astronomers have spotted a massive hydrogen cloud near the Milky Way that may be a rare dark galaxy-an object composed of gas and dark matter but lacking stars and light. Detected through radio...