Astronomers have discovered in space to the mysterious galaxy, in which there are no stars. Dark education located in 11 billion light years from Earth, filled with gas, but does not emit light. Therefore, they long remained hidden from telescopes, although in theory, scientists assumed that they still exist.



Researchers from the University of California at Santa Cruz (University of California, Santa Cruz) saw a unique galaxy, using as "flashlight" by the light of one of the brightest objects in space - quasar HE0109-3518. This ultra-bright galaxy with the power of 100 trillion illuminate the space of 10 million light-years around.

The study of the sky was performed using the "Very large telescope" (Very Large Telescope), owned by the European southern Observatory (ESO) and located in Chile. VLT is a complex consisting of four telescopes, acting together. Due to the large surface area and high sensitivity of telescopes, astronomers get high-quality images of objects on which comes even very weak light.

Having "snapshot" surroundings of the galaxy, astronomers have found at least 10 objects that can be attributed to thereby dark galaxies.

"Because of the great distance we see these galaxies as they were 11 billion years ago. Perhaps they will shed light on the processes of evolution normal star galaxies, - says the head of research Sebastiano Cantalupo (Sebastiano Cantalupo). "We think it "galaxy-children", which accumulate the gas, and then, when its density increases, collect the stars".

Scientists were also able to identify some properties of dark galaxies. For example, they calculated that the mass of gas in them a billion times the mass of the Sun.

As reported in the press release the University, dark galaxy will help scientists in understanding the early stages of the formation of galaxies like our own, as well as of the processes of accumulation of gas needed to form stars.

A detailed account of the obtained data, the researchers placed in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (article can also be downloaded from the website ESO).