08-26-2016, 06:01 AM
quote:
Originally posted by HereOnThePrimalEdge
Thanks Tom, that's an incredible discovery. Considering how much of the universe is made up of dark matter, it's hard to imagine what other formations of dark matter may exist all around us.
Is this the largest dark matter galaxy so far detected? Can any of the other telescopes on Mauna Kea detect and locate dark matter formations? Would the TMT?
Dark matter doesn't interact with electromagnetism so it is hard to detect. In order to find it the telescopes map star velocities and look for unexplained accelerations. One of the biggest data sets is SLUGGS which was compiled by KECK and SUBARU http://sluggs.swin.edu.au/Start.html Then they apply state-of-the-art simulators to try and add in dark matter to understand where it might be. Also see http://www.keckobservatory.org/recent/en...conspiracy
The TMT will have the unique ability to see further into the past to understand how dark matter might form. One specific TMT goal is to study very distant “standard candle” supernovae that are magnified by the strong gravity of nearby galaxy clusters. The properties of these supernovae will allow TMT to test competing theories of Dark Energy and to determine how Dark Energy and Dark Matter have governed the evolution of our universe over cosmic time.
I'm sure the Dragonfly 44 galaxy will quickly be added to the list of targets.
quote:http://www.space.com/33850-weird-galaxy-...atter.html
Dragonfly 44 is one of 47 ultradiffuse, or "fluffy" galaxies that Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University and colleagues found in the Coma Cluster, a group of at least 1,000 galaxies around 300 million light-years from Earth. This distance is easily close enough for a telescope to see; the Hubble Space Telescope can see billions of light-years away. But no one had noticed these galaxies hiding in the dark before. Dragonfly 44 was one of the largest and brightest galaxies they found. While it's as big as the Milky Way, it only emits about 1 percent as much light.