Cosmic dance produces a new galaxy in NGC 3166/9
Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 15:00
in Astronomy & Space
A team of astronomers from Queen's University, the Royal Military College of Canada (RMCC) and their world-wide collaborators have detected what is believed to be a "tidal" dwarf galaxy (TDG). Only a handful of bona-fide TDGs have been identified and this particular candidate is the first that has been discovered by the international research team, using high-resolution follow-up observations of the cold group gas mapped by the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey. This detection places tight constraints on the history of its neighbouring galaxies and gives insight into the processes that drive universal galaxy formation and evolution.