NSF’s NOIRLab have discovered an ultra-faint fossil galaxy, called Pegasus V, at the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy. It was first detected as part of a systematic search for Andromeda dwarfs led by David Martinez-Delgado from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain, when amateur astronomer Giuseppe Donatiello found an interesting ‘smudge’ in data in a DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys image.
What is a fossil galaxy? They are essentially the faintest galaxies and fossils of the very first galaxies that formed. Pegasus V is considered a galactic relic that contains clues about the formation of the earliest stars. Astronomers have not yet discovered nearly as many fossil galaxies as their theories predict. This just means that you won’t find any of these fossils on eBay, unlike this tyrannosaurus rex fossil.
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We have found an extremely faint galaxy whose stars formed very early in the history of the Universe. This discovery marks the first time a galaxy this faint has been found around the Andromeda Galaxy using an astronomical survey that wasn’t specifically designed for the task,” said Michelle Collins, an astronomer at the University of Surrey, UK and lead author of the paper announcing this discovery.
