dwarf galaxies

Phil Plait Bad Astronomy Vla Agc114905

Non-baryonic mystery: Where is this galaxy's dark matter?

A faint diffuse galaxy is missing its dark matter.

By Phil Plait 1 week ago

A simulation of what a black hole with a disk of gas swirling around it would look, given the bizarre effects of its fierce gravity on the light from the disk. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman

A satellite galaxy to the Milky Way has a way too big black hole at its heart

Leo I is far too small for its enormous central black hole.

By Phil Plait 1 month ago

M92, a globular cluster about 27,000 light years from Earth. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine

It's galactic cannibalism all the way down

A satellite galaxy of the Milky Way ate a satellite galaxy of its own.

By Phil Plait 1 month ago

Artwork depicting the Phoenix stream circling the Milky Way (left), and some of the old red stars that were once members of the parent globular cluster that got torn apart to make the stream (right). Credit: James Josephides (Swinburne Astronomy Productio

The Phoenix star stream, remnant of a long-dead stellar city

By Phil Plait 1 year ago

Black hole with accretion disk and jets

In dwarf galaxies, a black hole wind is rising

By Phil Plait 1 year ago

Artwork depicting a dwarf galaxy, distorted by a previous galactic collisions, with a supermassive black hole in its suburbs. Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Dwarf galaxies have supermassive black holes, too… and some are off-center!

By Phil Plait 2 years ago

The Milky Way is a disk galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars. A new study indicates it underwent a burst of vigorous star formation that peaked about 2 billion years ago. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)

The Milky Way stole a lot of its satellite galaxies from another small galaxy

By Phil Plait 2 years ago

The location of the teeny tiny galaxy Segue-1, which is pretty much too faint to even see in this image, despite being right in the center. Credit: SIMBAD / DSS

Where did this tiny ghostly galaxy Segue-1 come from?

By Phil Plait 2 years ago

The faint galaxy Donatiello I seen in a small telescope (left) shows it near the very bright star Mirach; the same field as the inset box using the 10.4 meter Gran Telescopio Canarias (right). Credit: Martínez-Delgado et al.

An amateur astronomer has discovered a nearby galaxy!

By Phil Plait 2 years ago

The tiny and faint dwarf galaxy Bedin I is almost hidden in the background among the much brighter stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752. Note several other far more distant galaxies can be seen, too.

Astronomers accidentally discover a nearby galaxy in a Hubble image!

By Phil Plait 2 years ago