Another galaxy detected by astronomers from Australia

Scientists have discovered an Emerald-Cut Dwarf Galaxy which is located 70 million light-years away from Earth.

The rare rectangular-shaped galaxy is located almost 70 million light-years away from us in the Eridanus Group, in the Eridanus constellation. LEDA 074886 is called the emerald-cut galaxy and was recently located by an international team of astronomers of
the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

The findings will soon be published in Astrophysics Journal but a preprint is already available.

Redshift values of the Eridanus Group show that it’s composed of about 250 galaxies, 70% of which are spiral and irregular type galaxies while the remaining 30% are elliptical and lenticular types.

LEDA 074886 was detected using wide-field images taken by astrophysicist Lee Spitler and the Japanese Subaru Telescope. The unusual shape of this dwarf galaxy is possibly the result of a collision between two former satellite galaxies of NGC 1407, the brightest
of all 250 galaxies within its local group.

LEDA 074886 also features a stellar disk inside of it, which is aligned edgewise to Earth’s line of sight. The disk of stars rotates at speeds up to 33 km/second, though it hasn’t yet been possible to determine if it has a spiral structure because of the
relative position of Earth.

The Milky Way is heading for a collision with the Andromeda galaxy in about three billion years, and it’s possible that the resulting structure will be rectangular as well.

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Posted by Taimoor Tariq on Mar 22 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry