Space scientists have spotted a new neighbor lurking and going around the Milky Way. Moreover, the scientists say this newly discovered system of stars may soon merge with our own galaxy.
In a paper published on the open source research site arXiv, astronomer Gabriel Torrealba from the University of Cambridge and his colleagues revealed how they discovered the galaxy called "Crater 2" around 391,000 light years away from our solar system.
"We announce the discovery of the Crater 2 dwarf galaxy, identified in imaging data of the VST ATLAS survey," the researchers stated in their paper, as quoted by The Daily Mail.
Crater 2 is considered to be the fourth largest galaxy orbiting the Milky Way, with up to several billions stars and a diameter of 7,000 light years, or twice as large as a full moon.
The newly spotted dwarf galaxy is also "one of the lowest surface brightness stellar systems in the universe ever discovered," according to the researchers.
The team of astronomers was able to discover Crater 2 using the Very Large Survey Telescope in Chile. The dwarf galaxy was only discovered now because it is so stretched out that the light it produces appears very faint when viewed from Earth.
Although Crater 2 appears faint when seen from our planet, it emits around 160,000 times more light than the sun.
The researchers also stated in their study that "there is a mounting body of evidence that Crater 2 could have belonged to the satellite group, whose members also included the peculiar globular cluster Crater, UFDs Leo IV and V, as well as the classical dwarf Leo II."
According to the study, the newly discovered galaxy may have been formed from a cluster that also gave rise to the faint dwarf galaxies of Leo, which were also recently spotted.
Aside from Crater 2, other galaxies have earlier been discovered circling the Milky Way. These include the Sagittarius dwarf and two Magellanic clouds.
