Astronomers have spotted for the first time a trio of supermassive galaxies that were already fully formed in the first billion years of the universe’s existence These scarlet star-makers — identified thanks to imaging and spectrograph data by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — challenge long-held notions that supermassive galaxies formed only after much longer periods of time “It is a bit like looking at rocks from the earliest times in Earth’s history and seeing fossils of fully formed animals,” said Pieter van Dokkum, the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy and professor of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who is co-author of a new study in the journal Nature describing the discovery led by scientists at the University of Geneva identified the trio of early galaxies using data from JWST’s FRESCO (First Reionization Epoch Spectroscopic Complete) Survey FRESCO is able to accurately measure distances and masses of galaxies The Webb telescope’s unparalleled capabilities have allowed astronomers to systematically study galaxies in the very distant and early universe providing insights into massive and dust-obscured galaxies By analyzing galaxies in the FRESCO survey scientists found that most of them fit existing models they also found three surprisingly massive galaxies that have roughly the same number of stars as today’s Milky Way These galaxies are also forming new stars at a rate that is nearly twice as high as their lower-mass counterparts and galaxies formed at later times which gives them a distinct red appearance in JWST images they have been named the three “Red Monsters.” “Our findings are reshaping our understanding of galaxy formation in the early universe,” said Mengyuan Xiao lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva The prevailing model of galaxy formation suggests that galaxies are mostly composed of dark matter and gas initially is then slowly turned into stars as a galaxy ages only about 20% of this gas is converted into stars in galaxies But van Dokkum and his colleagues found that supermassive galaxies in the early universe may have been much more efficient at converting gas into stars these galaxies managed to turn nearly all of their gas into stars in just a few hundred million years — the blink of a cosmological eye,” van Dokkum said The researchers stressed that their finding does not upend the standard cosmological model for galaxy formation the “Red Monsters” add a new wrinkle — the possibility that early galaxies could grow more quickly under specific conditions Future observations with JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile will provide further insights into these supermassive “Red Monsters” and reveal larger samples of such galaxies The research team included more than three dozen astronomers from institutions in the United States You may not be able to find the page you were after because of: You might find one of the following links useful: Scott Genin highlights the impact of quantum simulations on materials discovery and the advancements needed for scalability QEPNT Hub develops quantum-enabled navigation technologies addressing GNSS vulnerabilities and enhancing resilience for national security and various sectors Catherine Yokan from NMIS discusses her work on advanced composites addressing challenges in aerospace manufacturing and Scotland's growing space industry The SideKick QCL Controller offers a low-noise laser control solution ensuring stable and precise operation for demanding laser applications LabOne Q is a new software framework that accelerates quantum computing progress on Zurich Instruments’ hardware users can design complex quantum experiments with an intuitive you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from AZoNetwork.com please log into your AZoProfile account first Registered members can chat with Azthena, request quotations, download pdf's, brochures and subscribe to our related newsletter content A few things you need to know before we start Read the full Terms & Conditions Using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) at W.M. Keck Observatory, astronomers have identified nine rings — more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy — around the collisional ring galaxy LEDA 1313424 a ring galaxy approximately 567 million light-years away in the constellation of Pisces They also confirmed which galaxy dove through LEDA 1313424 creating these rings: the blue dwarf galaxy that sits to its immediate center-left Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Imad Pasha & Pieter van Dokkum LEDA 1313424 is a ring galaxy discovered in 2019 in the images from the Legacy Survey DR9 corresponding to a distance of 567 million light-years LEDA 1313424 has a diameter of 250,000 light-years — almost two-and-a-half times larger than our Milky Way Galaxy “This was a serendipitous discovery,” said Imad Pasha “I was looking at a ground-based imaging survey and when I saw a galaxy with several clear rings A small blue dwarf galaxy traveled like a dart through the core of LEDA 1313424 about 50 million years ago The collision created ten rings around LEDA 1313424 an unprecedented nine of which are detected though they are currently separated by 130,000 light-years “We’re catching the Bullseye at a very special moment in time,” said Yale University’s Professor Pieter van Dokkum “There’s a very narrow window after the impact when a galaxy like this would have so many rings.” The researchers used Hubble’s crisp vision to carefully to pinpoint the location of eight of LEDA 1313424’s rings and also used Keck to confirm one more ring They also found a stunning connection between the ring galaxy and a long-established theory: the galaxy’s rings appear to have moved outward almost exactly as predicted by models “That theory was developed for the day that someone saw so many rings,” Professor van Dokkum said “It is immensely gratifying to confirm this long-standing prediction with the Bullseye galaxy.” it would be more obvious that the galaxy’s rings aren’t evenly spaced like those on a dart board Hubble’s image shows the galaxy from a slight angle “If we were to look down at the galaxy directly with rings bunched up at the center and gradually becoming more spaced out the farther out they are,” Pasha explained A paper about this discovery was published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and Dragonfly Characterization of a Giant Nine-Ringed Galaxy The Hubble Space Telescope just imaged a massive bullseye in space: LEDA 1313424 which is about 2.5 times the size of the Milky Way The Bullseye (affectionately) lies 567 million light-years from Earth making it a rather distant object to capture in detail But Hubble is a veteran at imaging galaxies and the recent image reveals more rings around the Bullseye than previously known The Bullseye is now confirmed to have nine rings Researchers confirmed the existence of the ninth ring by studying data from the W That means the Bullseye has six more rings than any other known galaxy Even more compelling than the sheer number of rings around the galaxy Researchers believe that a tiny blue dwarf galaxy flew through the bullseye about 50 million years ago producing the rings in the same way a rock thrown into a pond produces ripples “Hubble can see more rings than previous observations because of its higher spatial resolution: that allows us to see separations between rings that in ground-based observations are blurred together in a single ring,” said Pieter G an astronomer at Yale University and co-author of a study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters describing the galaxy The blue dwarf galaxy wasn’t obliterated in the process though—in fact it’s the blob visible directly to the Bullseye’s left in the above image It’s also a strange twist on the bullseye analogy as the bullseye didn’t exist until the blue galaxy crashed through it The galaxies are now about 130,000 light-years apart According to a Keck Observatory release the research team suspects a tenth ring existed but has since faded and may sit three times farther out than the widest ring in the above image “If we were to look down at the galaxy directly, the rings would look circular, with rings bunched up at the center and gradually becoming more spaced out the farther out they are,” said Imad Pasha, a doctoral student at Yale University and lead author of the study, in the NASA release So the Bullseye isn’t a perfect set of concentric circles and a portal into the past galactic interactions of it and its nearest neighbor More galactic collisions may come into view with the launch of the Roman Space Telescope, which is expected to be in space by May 2027 “I expect that some of the most surprising results from Roman will come from just looking at the images – once we know what to look for and other automated techniques can discover cool objects with incredible speed and efficiency,” van Dokkum said it is often human eyes that pick out things that are entirely new.” ' + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.webview_notification_text + ' " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_title + " " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_text + " Firefighters worked through the night to contain a fire that broke out Saturday evening at Club33 and was brought under control after several hours The first fire units began returning to the station just before 3:00 a.m. but crews remained on site for extensive overhaul operations The local safety authority reported that efforts to fully extinguish the fire would continue for several more hours with demolition of the building’s roof aiding in the process The fire was initially visible from outside the structure but firefighters managed to push the flames back inside Due to concerns that the roof might collapse crews were only able to battle the fire from outside Heavy smoke prompted authorities to issue an NL-Alert warning residents in the area The fire department deployed two aerial platforms and a drone to assist with firefighting efforts Emergency services evacuated two neighboring homes and four apartments as a precaution The displaced residents were relocated to a hotel for the night Officials have not determined when they will be able to return Water damage was reported in the affected apartments Authorities have not yet identified the cause of the fire Investigators will assess the site after the remaining hot spots are fully extinguished Metrics details One of the surprising results from the Hubble Space Telescope was the discovery that many of the most massive galaxies at redshift z ≈ 2 are very compact having a half-light radius of only 1−2 kpc The interpretation is that massive galaxies formed inside out with their cores largely in place by z ≈ 2 and approximately half of their present-day mass added later through minor mergers quiescent galaxy at a photometric redshift of \({z}_{{{{\rm{phot}}}}}=1.9{4}_{-0.17}^{+0.13}\) with a complete Einstein ring The ring was found in the James Webb Space Telescope COSMOS-Web survey and is produced by a background galaxy at \({z}_{{{{\rm{phot}}}}}=2.9{8}_{-0.47}^{+0.42}\) Its 1.54″ diameter provides a direct measurement of the mass of the ‘pristine’ core of a massive galaxy observed before the mixing and dilution of its stellar population during the 10 Gyr of galaxy evolution between z = 2 and z = 0 We find a mass for the lens \({M}_{{{{\rm{lens}}}}}=6.{5}_{-1.5}^{+3.7}\times 1{0}^{11}\) M⊙ within a radius of 6.6 kpc The stellar mass within the same radius is \({M}_{{{{\rm{stars}}}}}=1.{1}_{-0.3}^{+0.2}\times 1{0}^{11}\) M⊙ for a Chabrier initial mass function and the fiducial dark matter mass is \({M}_{{{{\rm{dm}}}}}=2.{6}_{-0.7}^{+1.6}\times 1{0}^{11}\) M⊙ Additional mass appears to be needed to explain the lensing results either in the form of a higher-than-expected dark matter density or a bottom-heavy initial mass function The coordinates of the lens are RA = 10 h 00 min 24.11 s \({{{\rm{dec.}}}}={1}^{\circ }\,5{3}^{{\prime} }\,34.{9}^{{\prime}{\prime} }\) (J2000) Top panels: images in the HST/ACS F814W band and the JWST/NIRCam F115W The galaxy is well fit by a quiescent stellar population at \(z=1.9{4}_{-0.17}^{+0.13}\) and a total stellar mass of \(1.{1}_{-0.4}^{+0.3}\times 1{0}^{11}\) M⊙ (for a Chabrier IMF) with the summed flux of the two red knots shown in black circles and the blue ring in grey circles The red knots provide a reasonably well-constrained redshift of \({z}_{{{{\rm{phot}}}}}=2.9{7}_{-0.37}^{+0.44}\) The galaxy is almost perfectly round and there are no obvious star-forming regions tidal tails or other irregularities in the residuals from the GALFIT fit We now turn to the mass of JWST-ER1g as inferred from the radius of the Einstein ring. The photometric redshifts of the lens and source, combined with the radius of the Einstein ring, give a total mass of \({M}_{{{{\rm{lens}}}}}={6.5}_{-1.5}^{+3.7}\times {10}^{11}\) M⊙ within r = 6.6 kpc (Methods) The stellar mass within the Einstein radius is 0.79 times the total mass as determined by GALFIT and Prospector \({M}_{{{{\rm{stars}}}}}=\left({1.1}_{-0.3}^{+0.2}\times {10}^{11}\right)\) M⊙ for a Chabrier IMF There is a large difference between the lens mass and the Chabrier stellar mass of JWST-ER1g with the lens mass a factor of \(5.{9}_{-1.6}^{+4.1}\) higher than the stellar mass This is the central result of our study (besides the report of the discovery of JWST-ER1) and in the following we discuss several possible contributors to the lensing mass with the actual star formation rate depending on the distribution and temperature of the gas but the point is that JWST-ER1g would not be quiescent but rather a strong starburst galaxy Broken lines are for stars above the turn-off mass Comparison of the stellar mass to the lensing mass (open symbols) and the lensing mass minus the fiducial amount of dark matter (solid symbols) The dashed line indicates a one-to-one relation The dark matter mass within 1.9 kpc is only 3 × 1010 M⊙ for a 1013 M⊙ halo with a NFW profile and even if this were enhanced by a factor of 2–3 it would not be enough to account for the missing mass within the Einstein radius with a Salpeter IMF also providing a good fit This should work particularly well for JWST-ER1 as the effective radius of the galaxy is a factor of 3.5 smaller than the Einstein radius Future NIRSpec observations of JWST-ER1 could provide the velocity dispersion of the galaxy and pin down the redshifts of the lens and source so that all space-based images are aligned to a common astrometric frame The galaxy was found from a visual inspection of a mosaic that was generated from the F115W the characteristics of an Einstein ring can be glimpsed: a compact red galaxy near the centre of a blue ring The most obvious argument in favour of the lensing interpretation is that the photometric redshift of the ring is higher than that of the central galaxy (see main text) and it might be possible to fit both the lens and the ring with a model at z ≈ 2.1 Here we highlight the morphology of the ring. In Supplementary Fig. 2 we show an enlarged high-contrast colour image generated from the F150W and F444W data after subtracting the best-fitting model for the central galaxy There are several symmetries in the image: as well as the two bright red knots it appears that two blue knots are also multiple imaged The most compelling argument for lensing is the morphology of the red knots (presumably the bulge of the lensed galaxy): they are stretched into mirrored arcs on each side of the galaxy something that cannot be explained in collisional ring scenarios We fit the lens galaxy with the GALFIT code53 to determine its structure and in preparation for measuring its photometry We use cutouts of 4.1″ × 4.1″ with 0.025″ per pixel sampling in the NIRCam bands and 0.05″ per pixel sampling in the ACS F814W band The presence of the ring makes it difficult to measure the size Sèrsic index and background level simultaneously We therefore first measure the background level in each band from the outer edge of the cutout by selecting pixels in the ring area above a flux threshold and then expanding the mask using a 5 × 5 pixel kernel We verified that a well-exposed nearby star does not lead to qualitatively different results The structural parameters are listed in Table 1 The parameters in the four bands are in good agreement despite the factor of 4 range in wavelength and resolution going from F115W to F444W The average effective radius re = 8.8 ± 0.8 pixels where the root mean square of the four individual measurements is taken as the uncertainty The axis ratio is very close to 1 and there is no consistent position angle between the bands; in what follows we therefore assume that the axis ratio b/a = 1.0 with 0.05 mag systematic error added in quadrature to the random errors For the comparison of the lensing mass to the stellar mass it is not the total flux but the projected flux within the Einstein radius that matters Using a model profile that is not convolved with the PSF we determine that 79% of the total flux is within the Einstein radius For convenience the magnitudes within the Einstein radius are listed in a separate column We tested that simple aperture photometry on the galaxy gives a redshift and M/L ratio that are within the uncertainties of the fiducial values The uncertainties reflect the 16th and 84th percentiles The lensed galaxy is modelled in the same way as the lens, except that the scale-dependent SFH prior is not included owing to the lensing magnification. The main goal is to determine the redshift of the lensed galaxy. For completeness we list stellar population parameters for the two apertures on the ring as well in Supplementary Table 3 although they are not used in the analysis and we use the 24 μm data to assess whether JWST-ER1g has a hidden obscured star burst again taking the average of the listed relations for z = 1.75 and z = 2.25 The galaxy falls on the relation for quiescent galaxies The mass within the Einstein radius is given by: with θ the observed Einstein radius in radians Dl the angular diameter distance to the lens Ds the angular diameter distance to the source and G the gravitational constant The parameter Dls is the distance between the lens and the source The high lens mass is driven by the large diameter of the Einstein ring combined with the relatively high redshift of the lens Forcing zl = 1.5 (which is outside of the full posterior distribution of 5,000 samples) lowers the mass to Mlens = 4.1 × 1011 M⊙ but also lowers the derived Chabrier stellar mass to Mstars = 0.6 × 1011 M⊙ The ratio of the lensing mass to the Chabrier mass is ~7 which is very similar to the results for z = 1.94 The source redshift is the most uncertain parameter in equation (1) The lensing mass is lower for higher source redshifts The uncertainty in the source redshift also causes an asymmetry in the error distribution of Mlens This is because the mass increases rapidly when zs ≈ zl: the mass is >1012 M⊙ if zs < 2.5 We find \({M}_{200}=1.{0}_{-0.5}^{+2.6}\times 1{0}^{13}\) M⊙ where M200 is the mass within the radius where the overdensity is a factor of >200 with the relatively large uncertainty driven by the steepness of the relation in this regime The corresponding projected dark matter mass within 6.6 kpc is \({M}_{{{{\rm{dm}}}}}=2.{6}_{-0.7}^{+1.6}\times 1{0}^{11}\) M⊙ for a NFW halo and there are ~15 such halos in the COSMOS-Web area The region does not stand out in any way; the galaxy is either isolated or in a sparse group there are no other bright galaxies projected along the line of sight We infer that the contributions from other galaxies to the 6.7 × 1011 M⊙ mass within the Einstein radius are almost certainly negligible The COSMOS-Web data are publicly available from the STScI MAST Archive We have made use of standard data analysis software in the Python and IRAF environments, and the publicly available code GALFIT53 COSMOS-Web: an overview of the JWST Cosmic Origins Survey Drizzle: a method for the linear reconstruction of undersampled images A gravitationally lensed ring in MG 1549+3047 A large spectroscopically selected sample of massive early-type lens galaxies AutoLens: automated modeling of a strong lens’s light Atlas de galaxias australes (Observatorio Astronomico Discovery of a strong lensing galaxy embedded in a cluster at z = 1.62* The NEWFIRM medium-band survey: photometric catalogs and the bimodal color distribution of galaxies out to z ∼ 3 Stellar population inference with Prospector Galactic stellar and substellar initial mass function Passively evolving early-type galaxies at 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 2.5 in the Hubble ultra deep field The size evolution of galaxies since z ~ 3: combining SDSS Confirmation of the remarkable compactness of massive quiescent galaxies at z ∼ 2.3: early-type galaxies did not form in a simple monolithic collapse CANDELS: the progenitors of compact quiescent galaxies at z ~ 2 3D-HST+CANDELS: the evolution of the galaxy size-mass distribution since z = 3 Quenching of star formation from a lack of inflowing gas to galaxies Forming early-type galaxies in ΛCDM Simulations High molecular-gas to dust mass ratios predicted in most quiescent galaxies The global Schmidt Law in star-forming galaxies A universal density profile from hierarchical clustering The average star formation histories of galaxies in dark matter halos from z = 0–8 Impact of baryon physics on dark matter structures: a detailed simulation study of halo density profiles Baryon effects on the internal structure of ΛCDM haloes in the EAGLE simulations NIHAO - IV: core creation and destruction in dark matter density profiles across cosmic time Variation in the stellar initial mass function from the chromospheric activity of M dwarfs in early-type galaxies The luminosity function and stellar evolution Evolutionary synthesis of stellar populations: a modular tool quiescent high-redshift galaxies and massive nearby elliptical galaxies: evidence for hierarchical Minor mergers and the size evolution of elliptical galaxies The growth of massive galaxies since z = 2 Stellar kinematics of z ~ 2 galaxies and the inside-out growth of quiescent galaxies The stellar initial mass function in early-type galaxies from absorption line spectroscopy Systematic variation of the stellar initial mass function in early-type galaxies The initial mass function of early-type galaxies Radial variations in the stellar initial mass function of early-type galaxies Radial constraints on the initial mass function from TiO features and Wing–Ford band in early-type galaxies Evidence for initial mass function variation in massive early-type galaxies A super-Salpeter IMF in the center of NGC 1407 from non-parametric models Variations of the stellar initial mass function in the progenitors of massive early-type galaxies and in extreme starburst environments Merger-driven evolution of the effective stellar initial mass function of massive early-type galaxies The SINFONI nearby elliptical lens locator survey: discovery of two new low-redshift strong lenses and implications for the initial mass function in giant early-type galaxies MOSFIRE absorption line spectroscopy of z > 2 quiescent galaxies: probing a period of rapid size growth Consistent dynamical and stellar masses with potential light IMF in massive quiescent galaxies at 3 < z < 4 using velocity dispersions measurements with MOSFIRE Dark matter contraction and the stellar content of massive early-type galaxies: disfavoring “light” initial mass functions An atlas of color-selected quiescent galaxies at z > 3 in public JWST fields The COSMOS survey: Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for surveys observations and data processing First catalog of strong lens candidates in the COSMOS field 3D-DASH: the widest near-infrared Hubble Space Telescope survey Detailed structural decomposition of galaxy images Deriving physical properties from broadband photometry with Prospector: description of the model and a demonstration of its accuracy using 129 galaxies in the local universe MESA isochrones and stellar tracks (MIST) 0: methods for the construction of stellar isochrones The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling How to measure galaxy star formation histories Inferring more from less: Prospector as a photometric redshift engine in the era of JWST DYNESTY: a dynamic nested sampling package for estimating Bayesian posteriors and evidences S-COSMOS: The Spitzer Legacy Survey of the Hubble Space Telescope ACS 2 deg2 COSMOS field I: survey strategy and first analysis Galaxy structure and mode of star formation in the SFR-mass plane from z ~ 2.5 to z ~ 0.1 The star formation mass sequence out to z = 2.5 Hogg, D. W. Distance measures in cosmology. Preprint at https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.astro-ph/9905116 (1999) Properties of spherical galaxies and clusters with an NFW density profile Cold dark matter haloes in the Planck era: evolution of structural parameters for Einasto and NFW profiles THEHALOMOD: an online calculator for the halo model Download references This project is based on data from the JWST Cycle 1 COSMOS-Web Treasury programme Support from STScI grant nos GO-16259 and GO-16443 to P.v.D Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics Institute for Computational & Data Sciences Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics All authors aided in the analysis and interpretation and contributed to the final manuscript The authors declare no competing interests Nature Astronomy thanks Alessandro Sonnenfeld and the other reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02103-9 Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science Kies voor een van de onderstaande abonnementen om direct verder te lezen Wil je liever advertenties zien die aansluiten bij jouw interesses in samenwerking met gelieerde partijen die net als zij onderdeel zijn van de Mediahuis-groep gezamenlijke groepsprofielen op om je op basis daarvan gepersonaliseerde advertenties te tonen Met jouw toestemming delen wij de volgende gegevens met gelieerde partijen binnen de Mediahuis-groep voor gepersonaliseerde advertenties op de platforms van Mediahuis Noord en deze gelieerde partijen: Meer uitleg over hoe we je gegevens gebruiken vind je in ons privacybeleid en cookiebeleid Using the Hubble Space Telescope and a telescope in Chile trained on a patch of Southern Hemisphere sky Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum and his colleagues have discovered nine ultra-small These objects are so far away that their light has traveled for about 11 billion years so the researchers are seeing a snapshot of what the universe (The research appeared in the April 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.) "It would have been hard then to find a place remotely like what we see at present," he says Our own Milky Way is more than 20 times bigger than these compact structures because "over time galaxies have grown and evolved," says van Dokkum "We don't yet know precisely how galaxies have expanded Investigating these early ones will give us clues."   Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum today received the 2023 Jackson-Gwilt Medal from the UK-based Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) for his development of the Dragonfly Telephoto Array an instrument that has achieved unprecedented success in the measurement of low-surface brightness structures in space A member of the Yale faculty since 2003, van Dokkum is the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy and professor of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and former chair of the Department of Astronomy The Jackson-Gwilt Medal is awarded for outstanding invention or development of astronomical or geophysical instrumentation or techniques Roberto Abraham of the University of Toronto received the honor at a meeting of the RAS in London on Jan. 13 “Their work has stimulated a new area of observational research by demonstrating the capabilities of ultra-low surface brightness measurements to investigate galaxy evolution and the nature of dark matter,” the medal citation reads “The Dragonfly project has also enabled many Ph.D students to play key roles in the development and use of a state-of-the-art observational facility The Dragonfly system and its impressive scientific productivity and significance represent an exceptionally creative and novel achievement in experimental astrophysics.” features clusters of Canon telephoto lenses that are used together as a wide-field began designing the telescope in 2013 with three lenses; within the next year it will have 168 lenses Discoveries made with the Dragonfly telescope include a new population of ultra-diffuse galaxies and extended galaxy halos around nearby galaxies “The Dragonfly project was born in friendship with Bob and I wanting to do a small project together to bring back some of the joy that we had in the beginning of our careers,” van Dokkum said “It’s incredibly satisfying that it turned out so well Metrics details A Brief Communications Arising to this article was published on 12 September 2018 NGC1052–DF2 demonstrates that dark matter is not always coupled with baryonic matter on galactic scales Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout Constraints on the relationship between stellar mass and halo mass at low and high redshift The average star formation histories of galaxies in dark matter halos from z = 0–8 extremely diffuse galaxies in the Coma cluster Ultra-low surface brightness imaging with the Dragonfly telephoto array Dwarf galaxy candidates found on the SERC EJ sky survey A synthesis of data from fundamental plane and surface brightness fluctuation surveys Extensive globular cluster systems associated with ultra diffuse galaxies in the Coma cluster Resolved massive star clusters in the Milky Way and its satellites: brightness profiles and a catalog of fundamental parameters An overmassive dark halo around an ultra-diffuse galaxy in the Virgo cluster The observed properties of dwarf galaxies in and around the Local Group The masses of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies Accurate masses for dispersion-supported galaxies Missing mass in collisional debris from galaxies Tidal dwarf galaxies in cosmological simulations Quasar outflows and the formation of dwarf galaxies Mandelker, N., van Dokkum, P. G., Brodie, J. P. & Ceverino, D. Cold filamentary accretion and the formation of metal poor globular clusters. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.09108 (2017) Minkowski’s object—a starburst triggered by a radio jet A direct empirical proof of the existence of dark matter A modification of the Newtonian dynamics as a possible alternative to the hidden mass hypothesis The dark matter crisis: falsification of the current standard model of cosmology Constraining the galaxy–halo connection over the last 13.3 Gyr: star formation histories Substantial variation in the diffuse stellar halos around spiral galaxies The Planetary Nebula Spectrograph elliptical galaxy survey: the dark matter in NGC 4494 The Gemini-North Multi-Object Spectrograph: Performance in imaging SExtractor: Software for source extraction in Instrument Design and Performance for Optical/Infrared Ground-based Telescopes The Keck Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer A high stellar velocity dispersion and ~100 globular clusters for the ultra-diffuse galaxy Dragonfly 44 The relevance of uncertain aspects of stellar evolution and the initial mass function to the derived physical properties of galaxies A high stellar velocity dispersion for a compact massive galaxy at redshift z = 2.186 Measures of location and scale for velocities in clusters of galaxies—a robust approach The Hubble Space Telescope Key Project on the extragalactic distance scale Combining the constraints on the Hubble constant Globular cluster luminosity function as distance indicator The Advanced Camera for Surveys Virgo Cluster Survey Surface brightness fluctuation calibration for giant and dwarf early-type galaxies Surface brightness fluctuations in the Hubble Space Telescope ACS/WFC F814W bandpass and an update on galaxy distances Methods for determining the masses of spherical systems Danieli, S., van Dokkum, P. & Conroy, C. Hunting faint dwarf galaxies in the field using integrated light surveys. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1711.00860 (2017) Gu, M. et al. Low metallicities and old ages for three ultra-diffuse galaxies in the Coma cluster. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1709.07003 (2017) On the variation of the initial mass function Optical discovery of intracluster matter on the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey—the star pile in A545 Crazy heart: kinematics of the “star pile” in Abell 545 Ultra-diffuse galaxies near the elliptical galaxy NGC 5485 A kinematic study of the Andromeda dwarf spheroidal system The SPLASH Survey: spectroscopy of 15 M31 dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies Evidence for two populations of Galactic globular clusters from the ratio of their half-mass to Jacobi radii The discovery of new galaxy members in the NGC 5044 and 1052 groups Global kinematics and metallicity subpopulations of the globular clusters The dynamics of luminous galaxies in isothermal halos Download references was supported by National Science Foundation grant AST-1616710 and as a Research Corporation for Science Advancement Cottrell Scholar Results are based on observations obtained with the W We are grateful for the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain and wish to acknowledge its important cultural role within the indigenous Hawaiian community visually identified the galaxy in the Dragonfly data and created the model galaxies to determine the distance measured the structural parameters of the object used an automated approach to verify the visual detections of low-surface-brightness galaxies in the Dragonfly data All authors contributed to aspects of the analysis and to the writing of the manuscript The authors declare no competing financial interests Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations The zoom-in shows the immediate surroundings of NGC 1052 the power spectrum is fitted by a combination of a constant (dotted line) and an expectation power spectrum E(k) (dashed line) From the normalization of E(k) we find that the SBF magnitude m814 = 29.45 ± 0.10 The implied distance is DSBF = 19.0 ± 1.7 Mpc consistent with the 20 Mpc distance of the luminous elliptical galaxy NGC 1052 The sum of g and r images taken with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array The image was smoothed by a 10″ × 10″ median filter to bring out faint emission The lowest surface brightness levels visible in the image are about 29 mag arcsec−2 the overdensity of compact objects stands out The Gemini-North i-band image of NGC1052–DF2 which provides the best information on the morphology of the galaxy White arrows mark the most obvious reduction artefacts The galaxy is regular out to at least R ≈ 2Re with a well-defined centre and a position angle and axis ratio that do not vary strongly with radius Globular cluster velocities as a function of projected position along the major axis (a) and the minor axis (b) a Gaussian with σ = 8.4 km s−1 is shown in b Download citation European Journal for Philosophy of Science (2023) Most galaxies studied need a component of dark matter associated with them in order to explain their observed properties Normally there is far more dark matter than normal matter with an average of 30 times more for galaxies about the mass of the Milky Way Dwarf galaxies are thought to have even higher ratios of dark to normal matter (more than 400 times as much) Pieter van Dokkum and colleagues report that the ultra-diffuse galaxy NGC1052–DF2 has a dynamical mass determined by the motions of globular-cluster-like objects that is essentially the same as the mass in stars meaning that it does not have a dark matter component The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has honored Yale’s Pieter van Dokkum with the 2018 Maria and Eric Muhlmann Award which honors important research results based upon the development of groundbreaking instruments and techniques Van Dokkum is responsible for the “Dragonfly” array a novel telescope consisting of “normal” telephoto camera lenses that are clustered and instrumented together There are now 48 lenses in two clusters on the telescope that can reach a limit of 32 magnitudes per square arc second in a 10-hour exposure over a large field of view This inexpensive — by comparison — telescope can outperform the world’s largest telescopes in finding very diffuse galaxies and circumgalactic material This led to the discovery of so-called “ultra-diffuse galaxies,” which have sizes comparable to the Milky Way but with fewer than 1% of the stars The suggestion is that these galaxies are almost entirely made of dark matter van Dokkum and his collaborators used the Dragonfly array to identify a dwarf galaxy that is almost entirely devoid of dark matter is a clear signal that the Dragonfly array continues to collect thought-provoking data Van Dokkum is Yale’s Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy He has a long history of published work on galaxies with more than 300 refereed publications and more than 34,000 citations and an h-index of 108 “while pioneering mainstream results on the structure and evolution of galaxies at high redshifts Pieter does not shy away from taking risks in opening new frontiers of research in uncharted territories.” Metrics details The geometry implies that the galaxies are moving away from each other we infer that they were formed in a high-speed encounter ≥6 Gyr ago Example of a collisional scenario involving NGC 1052 Velocities are given with respect to that galaxy (cz = 1,488 km s−1) An infalling gas-rich galaxy on an unbound orbit collided with a satellite of NGC 1052 about 8 Gyr ago leading to two dark remnants (possibly RCP 32 and DF7) and three to seven other dark-matter-free galaxies The peak corresponds to a line that has 11 galaxies located within ±30 kpc as determined from randomized realizations of the data shown with the four brightest members of the NGC 1052 group Yellow circles correspond to the positions of the galaxies in the box shown in a. The orientation and offset of the line corresponds to the location of the peak of the Hough transform Both DF2 and DF4 are part of the linear feature Before turning to the properties of the galaxies in the trail we note that the Hough transform provides post hoc validation of our initial assumption that DF2 and DF4 are related to each other Galaxies that are part of the trail are labelled with solid symbols The dashed line is a least-squares fit to the running median and has the form log re = −0.09(g − 20) + 0.87 kpc Galaxies in the trail are typically larger than other galaxies of the same magnitude Distribution of galaxies colour-coded by their location with respect to the least-squares fit The largest galaxies in the group are preferentially located along the DF2–DF4 axis corresponding to about 8 within D < 20 Mpc we find a central velocity for the remaining 28 galaxies of ⟨cz⟩ = 1,435 ± 20 km s−1 and a line-of-sight velocity dispersion of σ = 115 ± 15 km s−1 the orientation of the line is on the vertical axis and offset with respect to NGC 1052 on the horizontal axis We use simulations to assess the probability that the alignment of the 11 galaxies arose by chance We generate N = 1,000 realizations of the (x y) pairs by maintaining the angular distance from NGC 1052 for each pair and randomizing the angle This procedure ensures that the density profile of the sample is maintained for all realizations We then create Hough transforms for all realizations and determine how often the strongest linear feature contains ≥11 galaxies We find that the probability of a chance alignment of ≥11 galaxies is 3% There is no evidence for large-scale structure associated with the trail there are no galaxies in the trail direction in the outskirts of the group and the overall orientation of the group is perpendicular to the trail The assumption of isotropy is therefore slightly conservative in the sense that more galaxies will be scattered towards the line than away from it we note that the probability that there is a chance alignment and that it is a coincidence that both DF2 and DF4 are part of it is very low This joint probability can be calculated directly for the isotropic case: of the 31 simulations that have ≥11 aligned galaxies only 6 have both DF2 and DF4 in the sample corresponding to a combined probability of the observed arrangement of 0.6% but given the extreme foreshortening of the geometry the intrinsic axis ratio could be a stream-like approximately 1:20 The joint formation of DF2 and DF4 in a bullet-dwarf event explains their lack of dark matter and the presence of a trail of other galaxies on the DF2–DF4 axis Here we briefly discuss other scenarios that have been proposed to explain the properties of DF2 and DF4 these issues have now largely been settled The HST data for DF7 are available in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST; http://archive.stci.edu), under programme ID 14644. The Legacy Survey data shown in Fig. 3 are available at https://www.legacysurvey.org/ All other data that support the findings of this study are available in published studies that are referenced in the text We have made use of standard data analysis tools in the Python environment HST/ACS observations of 23 low surface brightness objects in the fields of NGC 1052 An enigmatic population of luminous globular clusters in a galaxy lacking dark matter A second galaxy missing dark matter in the NGC 1052 group On the orbital decay of globular clusters in NGC 1052-DF2: testing a baryon-only mass model On the evolution of the globular cluster system in NGC 1052-DF2: dynamical friction A complex luminosity function for the anomalous globular clusters in NGC 1052-DF2 and NGC 1052-DF4 A revised velocity for the globular cluster GC-98 in the ultra diffuse galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 Still missing dark matter: KCWI high-resolution stellar kinematics of NGC1052-DF2 The ultra-diffuse galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 with MUSE Ultra-diffuse galaxies without dark matter Dark matter deficient galaxies produced via high-velocity galaxy collisions in high-resolution numerical simulations J.-h Dark matter deficient galaxies and their member star clusters form simultaneously during high-velocity galaxy collisions in 1.25 pc resolution simulations A tip of the red giant branch distance to the dark matter deficient galaxy NGC1052-DF4 from deep Hubble Space Telescope data A tip of the red giant branch distance of 22.1 ± 1.2 Mpc to the dark matter deficient galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 from 40 orbits of Hubble Space Telescope imaging Dark matter and no dark matter: on the halo mass of NGC 1052 Constraining the formation of NGC 1052-DF2 from its unusual globular cluster population The emergence of dark matter-deficient ultra-diffuse galaxies driven by scatter in the stellar mass–halo mass relation and feedback from globular clusters The distance to NGC 1042 in the context of its proposed association with the dark matter-deficient galaxies NGC 1052-DF2 and NGC 1052-DF4 Keim, M. A. et al. Tidal distortions in NGC1052-DF2 and NGC1052-DF4: independent evidence for a lack of dark matter. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.09778 (2022) Discovery and analysis of low-surface-brightness galaxies in the environment of NGC 1052 Use of the Hough transformation to detect lines and curves in pictures A tidally distorted dwarf galaxy near NGC 4449 Constraints on the self-interaction cross section of dark matter from numerical simulations of the merging galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 Observational evidence for self-interacting cold dark matter Dark matter self-interactions and small scale structure Probing dark energy models with extreme pairwise velocities of galaxy clusters from the DEUS-FUR simulations Simulating galaxy formation with the IllustrisTNG model The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy—an overview flexible new program for astronomical image fitting The anisotropic distribution of satellite galaxies The alignment of satellite galaxies and cosmic filaments: observations and simulations Probing the intrinsic shape and alignment of dark matter haloes using SDSS galaxy groups Density Estimation for Statistics and Data Analysis (Chapman & Hall Introducing the LBT Imaging of Galactic Halos and Tidal Structures (LIGHTS) survey A preview of the low surface brightness Universe to be unveiled by LSST Current velocity data on dwarf galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 do not constrain it to lack dark matter A distance of 13 Mpc resolves the claimed anomalies of the galaxy lacking dark matter The TRGB distance to the second galaxy “missing dark matter”: evidence for two groups of galaxies at 13.5 and 19 Mpc in the line of sight of NGC 1052 Tidal stripping as a possible origin of the ultra diffuse galaxy lacking dark matter Creating a galaxy lacking dark matter in a dark matter-dominated universe Dark matter-deficient dwarf galaxies form via tidal stripping of dark matter in interactions with massive companions Moreno, J. et al. Galaxies lacking dark matter produced by close encounters in a cosmological simulation. Nat. Astron. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01598-4 (2022) The galaxy “missing dark matter” NGC 1052-DF4 is undergoing tidal disruption A disk and no signatures of tidal distortion in the galaxy “lacking” dark matter NGC 1052-DF2 Download references Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg All authors commented on the manuscript and aided in the interpretation Nature thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available Most of the newly formed stellar mass is in two clumps but several lower mass galaxies have also formed in the wake (bottom) There is no evidence that the trail is in the general direction of large-scale structure in this field given its location and its elongation in the direction of DF4 Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04665-6 close-up image of the interstellar comet 2l/Borisov continues to draw nearer to Earth and will reach its closest approach — about 190 million miles — in early December Researchers believe the comet formed in a solar system beyond ours and was ejected into interstellar space as a consequence of a near-collision with a planet in its original solar system Yale astronomers Pieter van Dokkum, Cheng-Han Hsieh, Shany Danieli, and Gregory Laughlin captured the image Nov Keck Observatory’s Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer in Hawaii They’ve also created an image that shows how the comet would look alongside planet Earth “It’s humbling to realize how small Earth is next to this visitor from another solar system,” van Dokkum said Laughlin noted that 2l/Borisov is evaporating as it gets closer to Earth “Astronomers are taking advantage of Borisov’s visit using telescopes such as Keck to obtain information about the building blocks of planets in systems other than our own,” Laughlin said The solid nucleus of the comet is only about a mile wide As it began reacting to the Sun’s warming effect the comet has taken on a “ghostly” appearance A Yale-led research team has discovered a galaxy that contains no dark matter — a finding that confirms the possibility of dark matter as a separate material elsewhere in the universe The discovery has broad implications for astrophysics It shows for the first time that dark matter is not always associated with traditional matter on a galactic scale ruling out several current theories that dark matter is not a substance but merely a manifestation of the laws of gravity on cosmic scales “We thought that every galaxy had dark matter and that dark matter is how a galaxy begins,” said Pieter van Dokkum, Yale’s Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy and lead author of a new study in the journal Nature mysterious substance is the most dominant aspect of any galaxy,” van Dokkum said “So finding a galaxy without it is unexpected It challenges the standard ideas of how we think galaxies work It has its own separate existence apart from other components of galaxies This result also suggests that there may be more than one way to form a galaxy.” and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy collaborated on the study Van Dokkum’s team located the galaxy — NGC 1052-DF2 — with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array a telescope van Dokkum invented and built with co-author Roberto Abraham of the University of Toronto but the researchers noticed it looked quite different in Dragonfly images “It looked like a diffuse blob sprinkled with very compact star clusters,” said co-author Shany Danieli “I love working with the Dragonfly telescope as it shows us faint structures that no one has even seen before.” Keck Observatory in Hawaii to measure the motions of 10 very dense groupings of stars called globular clusters They found that the clusters were moving at relatively low speeds — less than 23,000 miles per hour Stars in galaxies containing dark matter move at least three times faster the researchers calculated NGC 1052-DF2’s mass “The stars in the galaxy can account for all the mass and there doesn’t seem to be any room for dark matter.” The researchers used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to uncover more details about the galaxy Gemini revealed that the galaxy does not show signs of an interaction with another galaxy; Hubble helped to identify the globular clusters and measure an accurate distance to the galaxy “I spent an hour just staring at the Hubble image,” van Dokkum said particularly these days after so many years of Hubble that you get an image of something and say ‘I’ve never seen that before.’ This thing is astonishing It’s so sparse that you see all of the galaxies behind it It is literally a see-through galaxy.” Additional co-authors of the study are Yotam Cohen and Lamiya Mowla of Yale; former Yale graduate student Allison Merritt now at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy; Aaron Romanowski of San Jose State University; Jean Brodie of the University of California-Santa Cruz; Charlie Conroy and Ewan O’Sullivan of Harvard; and Deborah Lokhorst of the University of Toronto astronomers Pieter van Dokkum and Roberto “Bob” Abraham found themselves in a restaurant in Toronto nursing something of a mid-life crisis but they discovered that often meant doing less and less science and more and more managing large “They’re important and they’re great and you feel this tremendous obligation once you’ve reached a certain age to serve on these committees because you have to set things up for the next generation,” Abraham says The two friends fantasized about finding a small manageable project that might still have some impact they picked an idea: using new camera lenses to find objects in the sky that emit very little light They had no way of knowing then that within the next five years they’d discover an entirely new class of galactic object From the handmade telescopes of Galileo to spacefaring technological marvels like Hubble all telescopes are designed for one basic task: gathering light Telescope technology has advanced far enough that Hubble can pick up light from stars that were burning just 400 million years after the universe first popped into existence.  But telescopes often miss objects with light that’s spread out which astronomers describe as having low surface brightness Telescopes like Hubble have large mirrors that scatter light from bright objects in the sky “There’s this bit of the universe that’s really quite unexplored because our telescope designs are not good at detecting these things,” Abraham says When van Dokkum and Abraham sat down at that bar they decided to try their hands at studying these cosmic castaways The key turned out to be van Dokkum’s hobby as an amateur insect photographer He had heard of new camera lenses developed by Canon that were coated with nanoparticles designed to prevent light scattering Although they were intended for high-contrast photography—say snapping a photo of a boat in a sunny bay—van Dokkum thought these lenses might be able to spot diffuse objects in the sky Amateur insect photographer van Dokkum has a collection of dragonfly photos Abraham was skeptical at first: “Yeah I’m sure the Canon corporation has come up with a magical optical coating,” he recalls thinking But when the pair took one to a parking lot in a dark sky preserve in Quebec They brought graduate students on board and acquired more and more lenses—not an easy task at $12,000 a pop—eventually gathering 48 of them and arranged them in an ever-growing honeycomb shape to form what can rightly be called a telescope both van Dokkum and Abraham were at a conference in Oxford when van Dokkum examined an image that had come in from Dragonfly it had just eight lenses.) It was an image of the Coma Cluster one of the most photographed galaxy clusters in the universe and it was dotted with faint smudges that didn’t match any objects in Coma Cluster catalogs Van Dokkum realized these smudges were galaxies They repeated their observations using the Keck telescope which enabled them to calculate the velocities of the stars inside their mysterious galaxies One was measured at 50 kilometers per second 10 times the speed the galaxy should be moving based on the mass of its stars alone “We realized that for these extremely tenuous objects to survive as galaxies and not be ripped apart by their movement through space and interactions with other galaxies there must be much more than meets the eye,” van Dokkum says has less than 1 percent as many stars as the Milky Way That means that the vast majority of its matter is not the matter that makes up stars and planets and people—everything we can see—but dark matter which seems to interact with regular matter through gravity alone Astronomers have known for decades that galaxies can be made almost entirely of dark matter which have between 100 million and a few billion stars A dark-matter-dominated galaxy as large as the Milky Way Van Dokkum and Abraham coined a term for them: ultradiffuse “You look at a galaxy and you see this beautiful spiral structure and they’re gorgeous “But what you see is really just kind of the frosting on the cake No one knows how many of these galaxies might exist or whether they can have an even larger percentage of dark matter than Dragonfly 44 Perhaps there are galaxies that have no luminous matter at all simply massive dark blobs hurtling through empty space Though such galaxies have thus far evaded observation evidence of their existence may be lurking in unexamined data from the past And Dragonfly could be the key for finding them “When people knew they were real and that these things could exist and could be part of these galaxy clusters suddenly they turned up in large numbers,” van Dokkum says “They just escaped attention for all these decades.” LHCb’s discovery of proton-like particles behaving differently than their antimatter counterparts brings scientists one step closer to finding out why antimatter disappeared in the early universe The Standard Model is far more than elementary particles arranged in a table The fundamental particle of light is both ordinary and full of surprises the highest-energy form of light is everywhere The ADMX experiment trains scientists to deal with real signals—by creating fake ones Although scientists have yet to find the spooky stuff scientists discover new ways to search for theorized dark matter particles called axions The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will be named for an influential astronomer who left the field better than she found it Early-career physicist Jonathan LeyVa is helping to build one of the world’s most sensitive dark matter detectors An Italian experiment has a 20-year signal of what could be dark matter—and scientists are embarking on their most promising efforts yet to confirm or refute its results Maria Elena Monzani prepares an international team to search for clues to one of the biggest scientific mysteries Dark matter could be much lower in mass and slighter in energy than previously thought Using the world’s most powerful telescopes an international team of astronomers has found a massive galaxy that consists almost entirely of dark matter is located in the nearby Coma constellation and had been overlooked until last year because of its unusual composition: It is a diffuse “blob” about the size of the Milky Way we realized this galaxy had to be more than meets the eye It has so few stars that it would quickly be ripped apart unless something was holding it together,” said Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum lead author of a paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters Van Dokkum’s team was able to get a good look at Dragonfly 44 thanks to the W.M Keck Observatory and the Gemini North telescope to measure the velocities of stars in the galaxy They used the 8-meter Gemini North telescope to reveal a halo of spherical clusters of stars around the galaxy’s core similar to the halo that surrounds our Milky Way galaxy Star velocities are an indication of the galaxy’s mass the stars move at velocities that are far greater than expected for such a dim galaxy It means that Dragonfly 44 has a huge amount of unseen mass,” said co-author Roberto Abraham of the University of Toronto Scientists initially spotted Dragonfly 44 with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array a telescope invented and built by van Dokkum and Abraham Dragonfly 44’s mass is estimated to be 1 trillion times the mass of the Sun or 2 tredecillion kilograms (a 2 followed by 42 zeros) which is similar to the mass of the Milky Way only one-hundredth of 1% of that is in the form of stars and “normal” matter The other 99.99% is in the form of dark matter — a hypothesized material that remains unseen but may make up more than 90% of the universe The researchers note that finding a galaxy composed mainly of dark matter is not new; ultra-faint dwarf galaxies have similar compositions But those galaxies were roughly 10,000 times less massive than Dragonfly 44 “We have no idea how galaxies like Dragonfly 44 could have formed,” said Abraham “The Gemini data show that a relatively large fraction of the stars is in the form of very compact clusters But at the moment we’re just guessing.” the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale added: “Ultimately what we really want to learn is what dark matter is The race is on to find massive dark galaxies that are even closer to us than Dragonfly 44 so we can look for feeble signals that may reveal a dark matter particle.” Jean Brodie of the University of California Observatories Aaron Romanowsky of San Jose State University and Jielai Zhang of the University of Toronto Three years ago, a team of astronomers led by Yale’s Pieter van Dokkum surprised the scientific community with the discovery of a far-off galaxy that contained little or no dark matter The discovery had the potential to upend well-established theories about how galaxies form and evolve That is because dark matter — the invisible scaffolding that accounts for most of the universe’s mass — is considered essential for creating and shaping galaxies But how could a galaxy exist with almost no dark matter Some astronomers speculated the finding was incorrect they questioned the accuracy of distance measurements from Earth to NGC 1052-DF2 — the galaxy with no dark matter Now, in a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters van Dokkum and Yale graduate student Zili Shen have pinpointed the distance to DF2 and confirmed the earlier finding “We went out on a limb with our initial Hubble observations of this galaxy in 2018,” said van Dokkum Yale’s Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy “I think people were right to question it because it’s such an unusual result It would be nice if there were a simple explanation But I think it’s more fun and more interesting if it actually is a weird galaxy.” Knowing the distance to DF2 is crucial to determining its dark matter content. The calculation of total mass is based on the motions of the stars within the galaxy; their velocities are influenced by the pull of gravity The researchers found that the observed stellar mass with minimal room left for dark matter it would be intrinsically fainter and less massive would have more dark matter to account for the observed effects of the total mass van Dokkum’s team estimated that DF2 was 65 million light-years away put the distance at 42 million light-years away van Dokkum and Shen used Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to grab long-exposure images of DF2 red giant stars on the outskirts of DF2 and used the stars’ brightness to calculate the distance from Earth “Studying the brightest red giants is a well-established distance indicator for nearby galaxies,” Shen said They determined the distance at 72 million light-years away essentially confirming the initial finding we say that we can’t see most of the mass because it’s dark matter What you see is only the tip of the iceberg,” van Dokkum said Yet the mystery of how a galaxy formed with almost no dark matter remains found a second galaxy — NGC 1052-DF4 — that is also nearly devoid of dark matter a separate research group found 19 dwarf galaxies that may be lacking in dark matter “There’s a saying that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and the new distance measurement strongly supports our previous finding that DF2 is missing dark matter,” Shen said “Now it’s time to move beyond the distance debate and focus on how such galaxies came to exist.” Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker An enormous black hole has left the center of its home galaxy and is hurtling through space at a rate of 5.6 million kph In its wake, the supermassive object is trailing a long strand of star-forming gases. That’s how Pieter van Dokkum, a professor of physics and astronomy at Yale University, was able to spot it, according to Live Science The gas trail is twice the length of our own galaxy. It goes to show that when you are talking about space, there’s just no way to wrap your head around the distances at play. And in an era where the James Webb Telescope seems to make news every few weeks let’s raise a glass to the Hubble Telescope — the original intergalactic looking glass “We found a thin line in a Hubble image that is pointing to the center of a galaxy,” van Dokkum told LiveScience we found that the line and the galaxy are connected we inferred that we are seeing a very massive black hole that was ejected from the galaxy leaving a trail of gas and newly formed stars in its wake.” An illustration of how (possibly) a supermassive black hole came to be hurtling through space Two supermassive black holes existed in peace with each other until their galaxy gobbled up a second galaxy The supermassive black hole at the center of the second galaxy disturbed the balance of the first two The dwarf galaxy in question is 7.5 billion light years from our planet it likely held a supermassive black hole at its center It’s not uncommon for supermassive black holes to launch “astrophysical jets” of material into space But Dokkum and his team had a hunch that’s not what they were looking at The “thin line” the scientists observed had different characteristics than an astrophysical jet and it got brighter farther away from its point of origin The best explanation is that a supermassive black hole is on a tear through the gas surrounding its former home galaxy it would be the first time that we have clear evidence that supermassive black holes can escape from galaxies,” van Dokkum said Van Dokkum told Live Science that one explanation could be “a three-body interaction.” This is where two supermassive black holes in a tenuous balance were disturbed by a third Two supermassive black holes in the center of a galaxy are rare The introduction of a third is likely the result of galaxy mergers sometime in the distant past After some cosmic shuffling between all three black holes one of the original binary black holes likely got slingshot out into the great empty Something like this probably occurred to allow the ejection of a supermassive black hole from a rare binary black-hole galaxy Van Dokkum and his team submitted their findings to The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The paper is currently available on the pre-print server arXiv.org. observation from other telescopes is needed before his team can directly confirm its hypothesis Sign up to receive ExplorersWeb content direct to your inbox once a week This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase, My Modern Met may earn an affiliate commission. Please read our disclosure for more info Astronomy professor Pieter van Dokkum has a special passion for photography. And in particular, an enthusiasm for photographing dragonflies. This led the Yale University educator to publish his book, Dragonflies: Magnificent Creatures of Water, Air, and Land Van Dokkum brings the reader on a journey across the life cycle of these magical insects the winged creatures are found on every continent except Antarctica dragonflies are members of an ancient group that dates to the time of the dinosaurs The insects have long been a source of fascination for Van Dokkum—dating back to his childhood “When I was eight I already wrote about the metamorphosis of dragonflies as ‘one of the most beautiful things to watch in nature,'” he tells My Modern Met To capture the dragonfly lifecycle for his book Van Dokkum traveled to 50 different sites in the United States and Europe The result is a look at these delicate creatures that has rarely been captured on film The window to document them is short; adult dragonflies only live for a few months and time was of the essence “Dragonflies get more beautiful the better you can see them,” he explains “This really motivated me to get as close as possible and to document all aspects of their lifecycle.” Patience was key in snapping pictures of the creatures and Van Dokkum was well prepared. Already used to spending time immersed in the pond at his home in Connecticut observing dragonflies And by photographing his locations at different times of day he was able to realize a full picture of their lives—proving that his hard work and dedication paid off Celebrating creativity and promoting a positive culture by spotlighting the best sides of humanity—from the lighthearted and fun to the thought-provoking and enlightening Create a reading list by clicking the Read Later icon next to the articles you wish to save Ultra-diffuse galaxies somehow lost their star-forming gas leaving them with only a skeleton of elderly stars In 2016, astronomers led by Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University published a bombshell paper claiming the discovery of a galaxy so dim A heated debate ensued about Dragonfly 44’s properties that remains unresolved more than 1,000 similarly big but faint galaxies have turned up Dragonfly 44 and its ilk are known as ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) While they can be as large as the largest ordinary galaxies “it’s a task to filter out the noise without accidentally filtering out these galaxies,” said Paul Bennet an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore The bright star-forming gas that’s abundant in other galaxies seems to have vanished in UDGs Their existence has caused a stir in galactic evolutionary theory “They didn’t turn up in simulations,” van Dokkum said “You have to do something special to make a galaxy that big and faint.” Wild new theories have emerged to explain how Dragonfly 44 and other UDGs came about And these giant smudges of light may be providing fresh evidence of dark matter’s invisible hand As gravity brings clumps of gas and stars together their combined energies and momentums cause the mashup to inflate and rotate They don’t appear to have enough mass — and thus gravity — to stick together The concept of dark matter was invented to provide the missing gravity a galaxy sits inside a larger conglomeration of nonluminous particles This dark matter “halo” holds the spinning galaxy together One way to estimate a galaxy’s rotation speed is by counting its spherical clusters of stars but the number of these “globular clusters” correlates closely with those harder-to-measure properties van Dokkum counted 94 globular clusters inside Dragonfly 44 — a number that implied an extraordinarily large dark matter halo despite how little visible matter the galaxy has Van Dokkum and co-authors suggested that Dragonfly 44 could be a “failed Milky Way”: a galaxy with a Milky Way-size dark matter halo that underwent a mysterious event early on that robbed it of its star-forming gas leaving it with nothing but aging stars and a giant halo The object attracted the interest of another camp of astronomers who argue that dark matter doesn’t exist at all These researchers explain galaxies’ missing gravity by tweaking Newton’s law of gravity instead an approach called modified Newtonian dynamics the modified gravitational force for each galaxy is calculated from the mass-to-light ratio of its stars — their total mass divided by their luminosity MOND theorists do not speculate as to why the force would depend on this ratio but their ad hoc formula matches the observed speeds of most galaxies When news broke about Dragonfly 44, MOND advocate Stacy McGaugh an astronomer at Case Western Reserve University calculated from its mass-to-light ratio that it should rotate more slowly than van Dokkum’s initial estimate indicated The MOND calculation didn’t seem to fit the data More than 1,000 ultra-diffuse galaxies have been identified in recent years and a close-together pair labeled NGC 1052-DF4 and NGC 1052-DF5 (top) Teymoor Saifollahi and NASA/HST; NASA/ESA/Pieter van Dokkum; Judy Schmidt (left) Teymoor Saifollahi and NASA/HST; NASA/ESA/Pieter van Dokkum; Judy Schmidt But then in 2019, van Dokkum’s group downgraded Dragonfly 44’s rotation speed using improved data “Dragonfly 44 is an example of how these data evolve to agree with MOND,” said McGaugh Still, for the majority of astronomers, who believe in dark matter, the slower rotation speed just implied that Dragonfly 44’s halo is smaller than they thought. In 2020, an independent group further downsized the halo by counting dramatically fewer globular clusters it may be less massive than initially supposed suggesting that Dragonfly 44 isn’t a failed Milky Way after all A newly discovered oddity has compounded the mystery In a paper published in August van Dokkum’s group found Dragonfly 44 to be extremely ancient having formed between 10 billion and 13 billion years ago But such an old galaxy should not be as large as Dragonfly 44 is Early-universe objects tend to be more compact because they formed before the universe’s rapid expansion threadbare galaxy should have been completely torn apart by now That Dragonfly 44 has held together implies that it has a hefty dark matter halo after all — potentially restoring the “failed Milky Way” hypothesis but I don’t know if it’s right,” said van Dokkum posits that two small galaxies merged while rotating in the same direction puffing it out and blowing out its star-making material astronomers have also cataloged a vast and diverse collection of other ultra-diffuse galaxies The findings are forcing them to conclude that galaxies form in more ways than they knew Some newfound UDGs seem to lack dark matter entirely. Van Dokkum’s group identified one such galaxy in 2018, then spotted a trail of others nearby. This May, the team conjectured in Nature that the trail formed in a long-ago collision of two galaxies The collision slowed down the flow of the galaxies’ gas but their dark matter kept going as if nothing had happened The gas then compressed into clumps of stars eventually forming a string of dark matter-free galaxies a multi-lens telescope located in New Mexico is capable of spotting faint objects in the night sky Meanwhile, Bennet discovered two UDGs in 2018 that point to a different formation theory tidal forces from a heavy nearby galaxy seem to have ripped through the UDG Puzzlingly, a September paper reported recent star formation in a UDG contradicting the idea that they only harbor old stars Such a range of UDGs that look the same outwardly but differ internally may validate dark matter theory over MOND “If the stars are moving very fast in one galaxy that’s a big problem for those alternative theories,” van Dokkum said McGaugh agreed that if there are “genuine outliers” among the UDG population “that is indeed a problem for MOND.” However “that doesn’t automatically make dark matter a better interpretation.” Definitive answers will require new telescopes The newly operational James Webb Space Telescope has already spotted distant galaxies as they appeared when they were forming in the early universe which will help test and refine the nascent ideas “The big takeaway is that we still don’t know what’s out there,” van Dokkum said “There are galaxies that we haven’t discovered that are very big and they are not in our current catalogs even after all these decades of studying the sky.” Quanta Magazine moderates comments to facilitate an informed incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (New York time) and can only accept comments written in English We’ll email you instructions to reset your password 2023 (()=>{var e=async t=>{await(await t())()};(self.Astro||(self.Astro={})).load=e;window.dispatchEvent(new Event("astro:load"));})();Runaway Black Hole Leaves Behind A Trail Of Stars By Sowmya Kolluru - 352 words 2 minutes Alignment View CCSS | NGSS An artist's impression of a runaway supermassive black hole that is leaving behind a streak of stars (Credit: NASA Leah Hustak -STScI) Black holes have incredibly powerful gravitational pulls They usually gobble up everything around them scientists have found a black hole that is creating millions of stars as it zips through space a professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University He was looking for star clusters in an image captured by NASA's Hubble Telescope when he spotted a light trail "I was just scanning through the Hubble image and then I noticed that we have a little streak a cosmic ray hitting the camera detector and causing a linear imaging artifact.' When we eliminated cosmic rays It didn't look like anything we've seen before," Dokkum explains Curious to know where the light trail was coming from Dokkum and his team decided to investigate further They used the powerful telescopes at Hawaii's Mauna Kea Observatory they discovered that the streak was from a 200,000-light-year-long chain of newborn stars This is twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy The scientists say the stars are caused by a supermassive black hole racing through the gas clouds at an unbelievable speed could travel from Earth to the Moon in just 14 minutes This is too fast for it to catch anything in its path "We think we're seeing a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and is able to form stars we're looking at star formation trailing the black hole," Dokkum said The findings were revealed in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on April 6 The researchers believe there may be more runaway black holes waiting to be discovered They plan to expand their search once the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is launched sometime in 2027 The powerful Telescope is designed to image a sky area 100 times larger than the Hubble telescope Reply 0 Likes bibawin 2 years ago This is interesting Maybe when black holes are the only things left in the universe Reply 1 Like kopocarapyko 2 years ago this is realy cool lol Reply 1 Like diomandruby42 2 years ago i've never seen a black hole let alone one that makes stars Reply 1 Like coolpeter11 2 years ago 3 black holes almost in one place?WOW:) Reply 1 Like melo-mint 2 years ago whoa this is so cool Reply 1 Like georgelin 2 years ago interesting Reply 1 Like rovabyla-165949134872 2 years ago 3 black holes wow Reply 4 Likes dragonomg 2 years ago I have never heard of this until know and the fact that it threw up some start Reply 1 Like cocoacat 2 years ago Pretty cool❤️❤️❤️ X (Twitter) © 2025 DOGO Media Astronomers think that galaxies cannot form without the gravitational pull of dark matter. So a trail of galaxies free of this mysterious material, with no obvious cause, would be a remarkable find. In a paper published in Nature on 18 May1 astronomers say they might have observed such a system — a line of 11 galaxies that don’t contain any dark matter which could all have been created in the same ancient collision But many of their peers are unconvinced that the claim is much more than a hypothesis doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01410-x Read the related News & Views: ‘Giant collision created galaxies devoid of dark matter’ Download references Reprints and permissions Observation of edge and bulk states in a three-site Kitaev chain An asymmetric fission island driven by shell effects in light fragments Shapeshifting origami material shrinks when twisted Searching for dark photons in the Sun’s atmosphere AI scientist ‘team’ joins the search for extraterrestrial life ‘Tatooine’-like planet orbits two stars ― but at a weird angle HT is an interdisciplinary research institute created and supported by the Italian government whose aim is to develop innovative strategies to pr.. UNIL is a leading international teaching and research institution with over 5,000 employees and 17,000 students split between its Dorigny campus Department of Energy and Environmental Materials and advance cancer research in a leading translational institute Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute We are seeking a tenure-track associate professor to promote interdisciplinary research in nanoprobe life sciences or related interdisciplinary field A cat snuck into the newly renovated town hall in Dokkum, opened a tap, and caused 10,000 euros in water damage. The flood damage also means that part of the renovated building can’t be used yet, Omryp Fryslan and Leeuwarder Courant reported which falls under the municipality of Noardeast-Fryslan but the left wing will have to remain closed for a while yet due to the cat Renovators found the first signs of the cat last week Friday They looked for the critter but couldn’t find it they found the floor covered in a few centimeters of water “A devastation,” alderman Bert Koonstra told LC There was moisture in the walls and the furniture and water leaked through the floor into the parking garage He estimates the damage at between 10,000 and 20,000 euros the concrete floor into the parking garage was not irreparably damaged A five-step schematic showing two black holes in a binary partnership before a third black hole intrudes upsetting the balance at the galaxy's center and sending one of the black holes careening into intergalactic space Panel 6 shows the gassy trail observed in the new study A Hubble Space Telescope image revealing the 'runaway black hole' being trailed by a vast bridge of stars Nothing like this has ever been seen in space before Astronomers have discovered a "runaway" black hole potentially the first observational evidence that supermassive black holes can be ejected from their host galaxies Astronomers have spotted a runaway supermassive black hole seemingly ejected from its home galaxy and racing through space with a chain of stars trailing in its wake.  According to the team's research, which was published April 6 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters the discovery offers the first observational evidence that supermassive black holes can be ejected from their home galaxies to roam interstellar space located about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth.  the streak points right to the center of a galaxy where a supermassive black hole would normally sit "We found a thin line in a Hubble image that is pointing to the center of a galaxy," lead study author Pieter van Dokkum a professor of physics and astronomy at Yale University leaving a trail of gas and newly formed stars in its wake."  large galaxies host supermassive black holes at their centers Active supermassive black holes often launch jets of material at high speeds which can be seen as streaks of light that superficially resemble the one the researchers spotted Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox To determine this isn't what they observed van Dokkum and the team investigated this streak and found it didn't possess any of the telltale signs of an astrophysical jet While astrophysical jets grow weaker as they move away from their source of emission the potential supermassive black hole tail actually gets stronger as it progresses away from what seems to be its galactic point of origin astrophysical jets launched by black holes fan out from their source whereas this trail seems to have remained linear The team concluded that the explanation that best fits the streak is a supermassive black hole blasting through the gas that surrounds its galaxy while compressing that gas enough to trigger star formation in its wake.  it would be the first time that we have clear evidence that supermassive black holes can escape from galaxies," van Dokkum said Once the runaway supermassive black hole is confirmed the next question that astronomers need to answer is how such a monstrous object gets ejected from its host galaxy "The most likely scenario that explains everything we've seen is a slingshot caused by a three-body interaction," van Dokkum said "When three similar-mass bodies gravitationally interact the interaction does not lead to a stable configuration but usually to the formation of a binary and the ejection of the third body." —8 ways we know that black holes really do exist —9 ideas about black holes that will blow your mind —The 10 most massive black hole findings from 2022 This might mean that the runaway black hole was once part of a rare supermassive black hole binary a third supermassive black hole was introduced to this partnership Further observations with other telescopes are needed to find direct evidence of a black hole at the mysterious streak's tip Editor's note: This article was updated on April 10 to reflect that the study has now been published in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal Letters. Several new images were also added, coutesy of a NASA news release Physicists create 'black hole bomb' for first time on Earth James Webb Space Telescope finds a wild black hole growth spurt in galaxies at 'cosmic noon' Space photo of the week: Record-breaking James Webb telescope image captures 1,678 galaxy groups at once Pieter van Dokkum likes to see things normally invisible to the naked eye Mostly they are so far away that he needs instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope to see them In looking at the farthest edges of the cosmos he has discovered new stars and even whole galaxies in setting his sights on an earthly creature inches from his eye he has managed to create a photography book that depicts the entire lifecycle of the common dragonfly for the first time In the astronomy world, van Dokkum, a native of Holland and professor at Yale University, is best known for his discoveries showing that the universe is vastly more populated with stars than previously suspected. He specializes in the formation and evolution of galaxies when not studying the night sky through telescopes in places like mountaintops in Arizona and Chile van Dokkum has been traveling regularly with camera and telephoto lens to a small pond outside New Haven to capture the unseen life of the dragonfly which is generally more slender and rests with its wings swept back are found the world over—in fact almost everywhere other than the iciest places Studies of dragonfly fossils show they have probably been around for some 300 million years and were perhaps nature’s first flying creature At one time their wingspans stretched up to two feet across Their double-pair wings make them incredibly efficient air aces almost never missing when they loop up to snatch their unsuspecting flying prey out of the air and bulbous humanoid eyes give them an alluring appearance at once gem-like and graceful yet creepily alien if you can get them to stay still long enough to observe them closely That’s why van Dokkum started snapping pictures nobody had managed to compile a complete photographic record of the entire dragonfly lifecycle from underwater larvae through metamorphosis We emailed back and forth about his project Marc Wortman: How does an astronomer become obsessed with dragonflies Pieter van Dokkum: There are actually many similarities between photographing dragonflies and distant galaxies In both cases I use an instrument (a telephoto lens or a telescope) to uncover things that are very difficult to see It’s also really exciting when you capture something on camera for the first time whether it’s a dragonfly doing something amazing like mating in mid-air or making a picture of a never-before seen galaxy I recently found a little book with text and drawings that I wrote when I was eight years old But coming to the pond with my children and a camera I just started taking photographs and it went on and on from there What makes the dragonfly a special creature Their lives—particularly their larval stage—are more secretive and hidden than those of butterflies Butterflies flutter around our flower beds They move slowly and rest frequently and are more “in your face” than dragonflies It takes some effort to really appreciate the colors In the early morning you can find dragonflies that have just emerged from the water If you watch a flying dragonfly closely you’ll see it make a little loop in the air every so often: that’s when it captures prey Every loop is one less mosquito to worry about Did you learn things about dragonflies you didn’t know before embarking on this project I learned a lot—often by observing a certain behavior and then reading books and online material to figure out what it was that I had seen to find dragonflies that are undergoing metamorphosis—when I started I did not know that this process often happens at night (at least at the pond where I did much of my photography) I then stayed up and captured the whole process on camera which was an amazing experience as it’s just you and this one dragonfly for hours and hours It was probably due to the sleep deprivation but by morning I really felt a connection to it and I was kind of sad to see it fly off I probably spent about 1,000 hours photographing dragonflies over the past five or six years in 50 or so locations Many of the photos in the book were taken at a little pond close to where I live particularly when certain species did their metamorphosis People would call me about astronomy work issues and they’d realize I was standing in the middle of the pond I used fairly standard equipment: a digital SLR and a macro lens (sometimes on a tripod) for the close-up shots What were some of your most exciting moments in the process It’s very exciting when something unexpected happens like when a pair of dragonflies crash landed in the water and had trouble getting airborne again but in the end the male managed to lift her into the air and saved her I remember taking photos of a dragonfly that was sitting on a leaf and then suddenly a much larger dragonfly landed on top of it I pressed the shutter but was just too late to capture the cannibal moment I felt a bit sorry for the smaller dragonfly who had posed so nicely for me moments before Most of us might ignore them because they are so common and ponds—then go out when it’s warm and sunny You’re almost guaranteed to see dragonflies zooming over the water Then you can look for vegetation at the water’s edge: the males of many dragonfly species perch on reeds so they can patrol their territory and look for prey Females are often hidden in vegetation a bit further from the water; they are harder to spot Did you find something in dragonflies that relates to your astronomy work though mainly in working with modern telephoto lenses I realized that they have excellent optics and that in joining a number of them together they might have properties for distant observations that go even beyond the Hubble A colleague and I stitched together 25 telephoto lenses in a way that resembles the compound eye of a dragonfly which is composed of 30,000 compound lenses That’s why they’re such incredibly good hunters We named the telescope the “Dragonfly Telephoto Array.” We actually discovered a new type of galaxy with it The Dragonfly Array is actually set up in the desert in New Mexico right now looking at the sky every night What do you think comes next for you when you look to the sky and when you look at this small flying creature I’m not done with dragonflies—both the Dragonfly Telephoto Array and the dragonfly photography We’re thinking of expanding the Array so we can survey the sky faster and see even fainter galaxies than the ones we’ve already discovered I’d love to visit places I haven’t been to photograph some of the most dramatic dragonfly species I’ve never seen the largest dragonfly species there is a damselfly species in South America that is even larger It would be amazing to take photos of those giants Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here MarcWortman is the author most recently of 1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War Scientists surprised to find NGC 1052-DF2 devoid of mysterious substance but say its absence strengthens case for its existence A distant galaxy that appears completely devoid of dark matter has baffled astronomers and deepened the mystery of the universe’s most elusive substance. The absence of dark matter from a small patch of sky might appear to be a non-problem, given that astronomers have never directly observed dark matter anywhere. However, most current theories of the universe suggest that everywhere that ordinary matter is found, dark matter ought to be lurking too, making the newly observed galaxy an odd exception. “Something like this has never been seen,” said Prof Pieter van Dokkum, of Yale University, the study’s senior author. “It challenges the standard ideas of how we think galaxies form.” Dark matter’s existence is inferred from its gravitational influence on visible objects, which suggests it dominates over ordinary matter by a ratio of 5:1. They identified the galaxy using a low-budget setup designed from 48 commercial cameras and paparazzi-style lensesSome of the clearest evidence comes from tracking stars in the outer regions of galaxies, which consistently appear to be orbiting faster than their escape velocity, the threshold speed at which they ought to break free of the gravitational binds holding them in place and slingshot into space. This suggests there is unseen, but substantial, mass holding stars in orbit. In the Milky Way there is about 30 times more dark matter than normal matter. The latest observations focused on an ultra-diffuse galaxy – ghostly galaxies that are large but have hardly any stars – called NGC 1052-DF2. Read moreThe team tracked the motions of 10 bright star clusters and found that they were travelling way below the velocities expected. “They basically look like they’re standing still,” said van Dokkum. The velocities gave an upper estimate for the galactic mass of 400 times lower than expected. “If there is any dark matter at all, it’s very little,” van Dokkum explained. “The stars in the galaxy can account for all of the mass, and there doesn’t seem to be any room for dark matter.” Paradoxically, the authors said the discovery of a galaxy without dark matter counts as evidence that it probably does exist. A competing explanation for the fast-orbiting stars is that the way gravity drops off with distance has been misunderstood – but if this were the case, all galaxies should follow the same pattern. Andrew Pontzen, a cosmologist at University College London who was not involved in the work, said: “Alternative gravity theories tend to be tuned to reproduce typical galaxies, which means they can struggle to account for anything new or unusual.” a professor of astronomy at Columbia University in New York described the observation as highly significant “The standard paradigm has gas falling into halos – or lumps – of dark matter and turning into stars to make a galaxy,” he said “This one was clearly made some other way.” Speculative explanations include that a collision or cataclysmic event within the galaxy resulted in all the dark matter being swept away Van Dokkum and colleagues identified the galaxy using a low-budget setup called the Dragonfly Telephoto Array in New Mexico which they designed from 48 commercial cameras and paparazzi-style lenses The initial images just showed a ghostly blob on the night sky but by peering more closely at it using the Gemini Multi Object Spectrograph and Keck telescopes they were able to pick out star clusters within the galaxy and track their movements The team are now turning to look at other ultra-diffuse galaxies to see whether any others are similarly deficient in dark matter The findings are published in the journal Nature Starry starry starry night: Star count may tripleThe Associated PressWASHINGTON — The universe may glitter with far more stars than even Carl Sagan imagined when he rhapsodized about billions upon billions A new study suggests there are a mind-blowing 300 sextillion of them or three times as many as scientists previously calculated contained in a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature is based on findings that there are many more red dwarf stars — the most common star in the universe — than once thought The study by Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum and Harvard astrophysicist Charlie Conroy questions a key assumption that astronomers often use: that most galaxies have the same properties as our Milky Way And that conclusion is deeply unsettling to astronomers who want a more orderly cosmos When scientists previously estimated the total number of stars they assumed that all galaxies had the same ratio of dwarf stars as the Milky Way Much of our understanding of the universe is based on observations made inside our own galaxy and then extrapolated to other galaxies But about one-third of the galaxies in the universe are elliptical and van Dokkum found they aren't really made up the same way as ours van Dokkum and a colleague gazed into eight distant elliptical galaxies and looked at their hard-to-differentiate light signatures The scientists calculated that elliptical galaxies have more red dwarf stars than predicted "We're seeing 10 or 20 times more stars than we expected," van Dokkum said Generally scientists believe there are 100 billion to a trillion galaxies in the universe And each galaxy — the Milky Way included — was thought to have 100 billion to a trillion stars the Cornell University scientist and best-selling author who was often impersonated by comedians as saying "billions and billions," usually said there were 100 billion galaxies Van Dokkum's work takes these numbers and adjusts them That's because some of those galaxies — the elliptical ones which account for about a third of all galaxies — have as many as 1 trillion to 10 trillion stars When van Dokkum and Conroy crunched the incredibly big numbers they found that it tripled the estimate of stars in the universe from 100 sextillion to 300 sextillion even for astronomers who are used to dealing in light years and trillions "It's fun because it gets you thinking about these large numbers," Conroy said Conroy looked up how many cells are in the average human body — 50 trillion or so — and multiplied that by the 6 billion people on Earth So the number of stars in the universe "is equal to all the cells in the humans on Earth — a kind of funny coincidence," Conroy said astronomers have been buzzing about van Dokkum's findings said astronomer Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology Van Dokkum's paper challenges the assumption of "a more orderly universe" and gives credence to "the idea that the universe is more complicated than we think," Ellis said Ellis said it is too early to tell if van Dokkum is right or wrong but his work is shaking up the field "like a cat among pigeons." Its biggest weakness might be the assumption that the chemical composition of dwarf stars is the same in elliptical galaxies as in the Milky Way it would mean there are only five times more red dwarf stars in elliptical galaxies than previously thought another study also published in Nature looks at a single red dwarf star in a way that is a step forward in astronomers' search for life beyond Earth A team led by a Harvard scientist was able to home in on the atmosphere of a planet circling that star using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile The team reports that this giant planet's atmosphere is either dense with sizzling water vapor like a souped-up steam bath choking hydrogen and helium clouds with a slightly blue tint say the researchers and others not involved in the study While scientists have been able to figure out the atmosphere of gas giants the size of Jupiter or bigger this is a first for the type of planet called a super Earth — something with a mass 2 to 10 times Earth's The planet is more comparable to Neptune and circles a star about 42 light years from Earth The planet is nowhere near livable — it's about 440 degrees (about 225 degrees Celsius) It would be unpleasant," said study co-author Eliza Kempton of the University of California Santa Clara But describing its atmosphere is a big step toward understanding potentially habitable planets outside our solar system said study chief author Jacob Bean at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Bean and Kempton looked at the light spectrum signature from the large planet as it passed in front of the dwarf star and the result led to two possible conclusions: steam bath or haze The steam bath is the more interesting possibility because water is key to life said outside scientist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington But an upcoming and still unpublished study by Kempton and Bryce Croll at the University of Toronto points more toward a hydrogen-helium atmosphere Cosmos » Physics Andrew Masterson is a former editor of Cosmos Two new studies have confirmed a contentious claim made in 2018 that some galaxies are completely devoid of dark matter The studies are both made by teams headed by Pieter van Dokkum The claim concerned observations of a galaxy known as NGC 1052-DF2 which first came to van Dokkum’s attention the year before he and his colleagues noticed something peculiar about the way in which the globular clusters comprising the galaxy were moving They were travelling at speeds that suggested the total mass of the galaxy was equal to that only of its visible matter components invisible – is known to comprise the vast majority of the mass in the universe everything would have been moving much faster The conclusion was seemingly inescapable: the galaxy contained no dark matter at all – a condition held to be impossible The resulting paper, published in the journal Nature was greeted with a mixture of astonishment “It was a little stressful at times,” say van Dokkum this is how the scientific process is supposed to work; you see something interesting and in the end you learn more about the universe although the majority of the critiques were constructive and polite we had to scramble and figure out if we had missed something.” The latest pair of papers provides strong evidence that they hadn’t The first, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters provides an updated and more detailed set of observations of NGC 1052-DF2 The results confirm that the velocities of the galaxy’s globular clusters are consistent with those expected from stellar mass alone “With this confirmation of the low velocity dispersion of NGC1052-DF2,” the researchers write “the most urgent question is whether this ‘missing dark matter problem’ is unique to this galaxy or applies more widely.” Appropriately enough, that exact question is answered by the second paper, published in the same journal van Dokkum and colleagues announce the discovery of a second galaxy that contains no dark matter “Discovering a second galaxy with very little to no dark matter is just as exciting as the initial discovery of DF2,” he says “This means the chances of finding more of these galaxies are now higher than we previously thought Since we have no good ideas for how these galaxies were formed I hope these discoveries will encourage more scientists to work on this puzzle.” Related reading: Found: a galaxy devoid of dark matter By Shannon Hall consists of a record 99.99 per cent dark matter and could help rewrite our theories of galaxy formation Dragonfly 44 is the Milky Way’s doppelgänger in mass but its opposite in number of stars and structure “If you take the Milky Way and for every 100 stars you keep only one, then you’re getting pretty close,” says Pieter van Dokkum at Yale University “You also have to put those remaining stars in a blender and mix them all up into a blob.” This galaxy doesn’t have the iconic spiral structure of the Milky Way nor is it a flat disc Van Dokkum and his colleagues spotted it and its neighbours in 2014 with an array of telephoto lenses “By pulling them all together into this array which makes them look like the eyes of an insect we gather a lot more light,” says van Dokkum When the team aimed Dragonfly at the Coma cluster, an immense cluster of galaxies 320 million light years away, they detected 47 faint smudges: galaxies that could be at least as large as the Milky Way but which contain so few stars that they glow as dimly as dwarf galaxies There are two explanations for the appearance of these galaxies: they may be tightly bound by dark matter the so-far-undetected substance thought to make up about 85 per cent of the mass of the universe or they’re unstable – and the violent Coma cluster is currently ripping them to shreds van Dokkum and his colleagues observed Dragonfly 44 with the spectrograph on board the 10-metre Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea This allowed the team to track how fast its few stars move around the galaxy and therefore calculate its mass: a faster speed means a more massive galaxy The team found that the stars clocked in at 47 kilometres per second, making Dragonfly 44 roughly a trillion times more massive than the sun. With so little normal matter, it must contains 99.99 per cent dark matter to hold itself together, which is much higher than the universe at large. It even beats another  similarly dark galaxy in the Virgo cluster discovered earlier this year But astronomers are baffled as to how these dark galaxies arise yet the conclusion from this paper runs counter to my understanding of how galaxies are formed,” says Marla Geha at Yale University “I’m hoping these objects are rather rare and/or only form in special environments such as a dense galaxy cluster Otherwise we may need to rewrite galaxy formation.” Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Letters, DOI: 10.3847/2041-8205/828/1/L6 Explore the latest news, articles and features SPACE.com is the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier. This Weird Galaxy Is 99.99 Percent Dark Matter Astronomers say ultradiffuse or “fluffy” Dragonfly 44 shouldn’t be able to hold itself together with so few stars  By Hanneke Weitering & SPACE.com The Sombrero galaxy—an ultradiffuse galaxy also located in the Coma Cluser HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM, NASA Astronomers have discovered a galaxy as big as the Milky Way that consists almost entirely of dark matter a mysterious and invisible substance that scientists have been trying to figure out for decades Only one-hundredth of one percent of the galaxy is ordinary The other 99.99 percent of the stuff in this galaxy can't be seen No one really knows what dark matter is made of but scientists believe it exists because they can see the effects of its gravity on other things in space about 80 percent of the mass in the universe is dark matter If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today But no one had noticed these galaxies hiding in the dark before Dragonfly 44 was one of the largest and brightest galaxies they found it only emits about 1 percent as much light Van Dokkum and his team later realized that there was something very odd about Dragonfly 44: a galaxy that big couldn't possibly hold itself together with so few stars. There wouldn't be enough gravity, and the stars would drift apart. They suspected that dark matter was responsible for holding the galaxy together and this particular galaxy seemed like it contained a ton of it so they set out to determine exactly how much To investigate the amount of dark matter in Dragonfly 44, the team turned to one of the largest telescopes on Earth, located at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea They used a tool on the Keck II telescope called the Deep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph (DEIMOS) to study the movement of stars in the galaxy “Motions of the stars tell you how much matter there is," van Dokkum said in a statement “They don’t care what form the matter is In the Dragonfly galaxy stars move very fast So there was a huge discrepancy: using Keck Observatory we found many times more mass indicated by the motions of the stars than there is mass in the stars themselves.” van Dokkum and his team found evidence of way more mass than they could actually see Only 0.01 percent of the galaxy is made of ordinary visible matter: stuff that is made of atoms containing protons But the other 99.99 percent of Dragonfly 44's mass is the ever-elusive dark matter Of all the stuff in this Milky Way-size galaxy "This has big implications for the study of dark matter," van Dokkum said "It helps to have objects that are almost entirely made of dark matter so we don't get confused by stars and all the other things that galaxies have The only such galaxies we had to study before were tiny This finding opens up a whole new class of massive objects that we can study." The team then went to the Gemini Observatory Using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrometer (GMOS) spheroidal galaxy looks a bit like a dirty smudge on a photo of deep space New images from GMOS also revealed a halo of star clusters similar to the halo around the Milky Way. Some researchers believe that dark matter could be responsible for light halos around galaxies this means that dark matter might not be perfectly dark at all “Ultimately what we really want to learn is what dark matter is,” van Dokkum said “The race is on to find massive dark galaxies that are even closer to us than Dragonfly 44 so we can look for feeble signals that may reveal a dark matter particle.” Gallery: Dark Matter Throughout the Universe Strange 'Dark' Globular Clusters Located Around Giant Galaxy | Video 8 Baffling Astronomy Mysteries Copyright 2016 SPACE.com Hanneke Weitering is an editor at Space.com SPACE.com is the premier source of space exploration chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier Subscribe to Scientific American to learn and share the most exciting discoveries innovations and ideas shaping our world today Scientific American is part of Springer Nature which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www.springernature.com/us) Scientific American maintains a strict policy of editorial independence in reporting developments in science to our readers Gallery: Dark Matter Throughout the Universe Strange 'Dark' Globular Clusters Located Around Giant Galaxy | Video 8 Baffling Astronomy Mysteries Hanneke Weitering is an editor at Space.com SPACE.com is the premier source of space exploration HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM, NASA The trial against 34 people suspected of blocking the A7 highway to prevent anti-Zwarte Peit protesters from reaching the national Sinterklaas arrival celebrations in Dokkum last year The case was suspended shortly after it started because one of the judges The Public Prosecutor just started to explain why the 34 suspects were on trial when Sikkema fainted but he quickly regained consciousness and was able to leave the room on his own The trail was suspended for a time while it was determined whether Sikkema could continue a judge reported that Sikkem was feeling better and the case would continue on Monday The police then escorted the buses back to Amsterdam In court on Monday, the Public Prosecutor said that this lawsuit is not about Zwarte Piet. The 34 men and women are suspected of preventing a legal demonstration and causing a dangerous situation by blocking the highway because she put a call on social media to stop the activists The suspects themselves argue that they wanted to prevent disturbances by blocking the protesters from reaching Dokkum Almost all of the 34 suspects come from Friesland On Monday the court will deal with the cases against 9 of them The remaining suspects will appear in court on Tuesday and Thursday On Thursday two activists from Kick Out Zwarte Piet who were on the stopped buses on November 18th They are not being prosecuted for anything but will make use of their right to say something as an aggrieved party On Friday the Public Prosecutor will make its punishment demands against the suspects Preventing a legal demonstration could carry a maximum sentence of nine months in prison The maximum sentence for the blocking of a public highway is nine years in prison but it seems unlikely that such high sentences will be demanded A small group of sympathizers for the highway blockers gathered in front of the court on Monday morning "It's about our culture." Edwin Wagensveld leader of anti-Islam movement Pegida Nederland and Martin Bosma of populist party PVV is also at court to show their support for the suspects The total number of stars in the Universe “is likely three times bigger than realized.” Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum says there are “possibly trillions of Earths orbiting these stars,” dramatically increasing the possibility of finding alien civilizations New Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image Will Inspire You Today According to the new study just published in Nature new observations on the red end of the optical spectrum at the W Keck Observatory in Hawaii show an overwhelming population of red dwarfs in eight massive nearby elliptical galaxies The team has discovered that these galaxies hold twenty times more red dwarfs than the Milky Way This May Very Well Be the First New Earth Carl Sagan explains why this discovery has a dramatic impact in our search for intelligent life in the Universe if you increase the number of stars in the universe by three the number of potential extraterrestrial civilizations increases by three times as well Whether we make contact or not is another story Menu.page-199337639{--colorD:#e3fc01;--colorJ:#e3fc01;--gradientTransparentJ:#e3fc0100;--colorDC:#e3fc01;--colorDA:#e3fc01;--colorDF:#e3fc01;--colorJD:#e3fc01;--colorDJ:#e3fc01;--colorJF:#e3fc01;--colorJG:#e3fc01;--colorDDC:#e3fc01;--colorDTransparent:#e3fc01;--colorJTransparent:#e3fc01}SpaceLook Out Astronomers Just Found A Runaway Supermassive Black HoleAstronomers spotted the wake left by the supermassive black hole Michael Stevenson/UIG/Publisher Mix/Getty ImagesA supermassive black hole booted out of its galaxy by powerful gravitational forces is leaving a trail of ionized gas and newborn stars in its wake Galaxies colliding and merging is a pretty common event in the universe. Most of the larger galaxies we see today formed in a series of galactic mergers, and our own spirally home will eventually smash into the Andromeda Galaxy their supermassive black holes usually merge the two supermassive black holes end up orbiting each other in a death spiral until they finally collide and become one sending powerful gravitational waves out into the universe in the process But a tiny fraction of the time, computer simulations suggest, things get weird, and one supermassive black hole gets booted out of the galaxy. Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum and his colleagues may have just found evidence of that happening in an oddly-shaped little galaxy about 10 billion light years away They describe their findings in a recent pre-print paper In a recent batch of images from the Hubble Space Telescope van Dokkum and his colleagues noticed a narrow streak on one side of a small galaxy The galaxy doesn’t even have a catalog number yet but it’s densely packed with gas clouds and teeming with new star formation a nearly straight streak — visible because it’s much dimmer than the rest of the galaxy — extends out more than 200 light years where it ends in a bright blaze of ultraviolet light from two different wavelength filters on a Hubble Space Telescope instrument the center of the galaxy is toward the upper right and the black hole’s wake points toward the lower left “Not having encountered something quite like this before in our own images or in the literature,” they write in a recent paper van Dokkum and his colleagues booked some time with the Keck Observatory to take another look clumps of newborn stars blaze with ionizing radiation By measuring the wavelengths of light from the stars van Dokkum and his colleagues could estimate their age; the youngest stars are the ones farthest from the center of the galaxy And van Dokkum and his colleagues say it looks as if a powerful shock wave barreled outward from the galaxy’s core carving a path for itself and leaving a trail of hot compressed gas that triggered bursts of star formation in its wake The explanation that best matches the data from Hubble and Keck is something truly wild: a runaway supermassive black hole a galactic merger kicked a supermassive black hole out of the galaxy’s core and flung it out into space at about 360,000 miles per hour they form an even bigger black hole — let’s call it a superdupermassive black hole — which sits at the heart of the newly-formed galaxy the gravitational waves from the merger create a recoil which gives the new superdupermassive black hole a powerful kick that sends it careening outward from the galaxy’s core incredibly dense object moving at terrifying speeds through clouds of interstellar gas pushing a bow wave ahead of it and trailing a long wake of ionized hydrogen And van Dokkum and his colleagues think that may be what’s happening in their unnamed dwarf galaxy This diagram illustrates the process of black holes merging and pushing each other out of the way The idea gets some support from the surprising lack of activity in the little galaxy’s center There’s no actively feeding supermassive black hole there which you’d expect to find if two supermassive black holes had just merged according to van Dokkum and his colleagues “reflects the departure of all supermassive black holes from the nucleus.” So what happens to a galaxy with no supermassive black hole at its center? Not much, according to Georgia State University astronomer Misty Bentz “A galaxy without a black hole at its center would look the same as a galaxy with a black hole,” she tells Inverse 1000 times larger than the mass of the black hole at the center and there is an even more massive dark matter halo within which a galaxy is embedded So while a typical galaxy appears to be orbiting around the supermassive black hole at its center it is really orbiting around its center of mass and the black hole just happens to be sitting at the gravitationally stable point that is the center of mass.” the stars orbiting closest to the supermassive black hole — the bright denizens of the galactic nucleus — would definitely feel some effects from the cataclysmic merger and sudden ejection of their supermassive neighbor a few of those stars are so tightly bound to the supermassive black hole by gravity that when it leaves And van Dokkum and his colleagues say they’ve spotted two objects that might be clusters of those very attached stars — one near the bright knot of light where the wake ends Because this nameless little galaxy may have kicked out not just one van Dokkum and his colleagues saw “a fainter and shorter feature” visible in the shortest ultraviolet wavelengths “The feature may be shocked gas behind a binary supermassive black hole that was ejected at the same time as the supermassive black hole that produced the primary wake,” they write. That scenario involves a three-way galactic merger, like the one happening right now in Stephan’s Quintet “If a third supermassive black hole reaches the center of the galaxy before the binary merges a three-body interaction can impart a large velocity to one of the supermassive black holes leading to its escape from the nucleus,” write van Dokkum and his colleagues the supermassive black hole may actually be boosted to escape velocity The background of this image is from a computer simulation of a three-way galaxy merger; the labels may describe what van Dokkum and his colleagues saw in their small galaxy and the wake of a runaway black hole is a potential (and exciting!) interpretation,” says Bentz [van Dokkum and his colleagues] are pretty careful to say that this *may* be an example of a runaway black hole They also clearly describe how to improve on the observations that were presented in this paper So I think we will have to wait for further data in order to figure out what is happening here.” The most important step will probably be to see what the galaxy looks like in X-ray radiation which will likely be a job for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory Chandra could even catch a glimpse of the accretion disk around the runaway supermassive black hole — or even both of them That would be “the ‘smoking gun’ evidence for this scenario,” as van Dokkum and his colleagues put it And more images in the shortest ultraviolet wavelengths could show astronomers whether that second When the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope launches in 2027 it could help astronomers spot even more runaway supermassive black holes in other galaxies “The morphology of the features in the Hubble Space Telescope images is so striking that it should not be too difficult to find more examples if they exist,” write van Dokkum and his colleagues Bees and butterflies are the poster insects of our time — this is good; they need our help — but there is another amazing garden creature that enriches our world and gives a flash of color and life to the languid days of late summer Dragonflies seem masters of their universe — powerful Dragonflies and the related (and seemingly gentler) damselflies are also beautiful because to perceive this you have to wait for a dragonfly to be still and to spend some time being still yourself What you might see is the common whitetail an abundant dragonfly with a dusky blue-white abdomen and black bands on its otherwise clear wings; the common green darner a three-inch-long dragon with black and green stripes on its thorax and a blue-flecked abdomen; or the eastern amberwing just an inch long and with wings the color of smoky cellophane But it is not just the marvelous colors and markings a primeval beauty that nature got right from the start (as in 300 million years ago) The four wings extend out from a muscle-bound thorax The wings are long and veined— the veins act as bracing — so the effect is like looking at stained glass with a mosaic of panes and tracery of leading Adult dragonflies aren't much good at walking (the legs capture prey) but the wings turn them into aerial acrobats Photographer Pieter van Dokkum writes in his new picture book "Dragonflies": "They have mastery of their environment that is unique in the animal kingdom: They can fly upside down stop and change direction in the blink of an eye hover and suddenly accelerate to speeds of up to thirty miles per hour." has turned itself into the albatross of the arthropod world by sticking out its wings working the currents and soaring for thousands of miles the Smithsonian's curator emeritus of Neuroptera (net-winged insects) The compound eyes are not only colorful in themselves and it will probably return for your examination and enjoyment Dragonflies are beneficial to us in that they eat mosquitoes both in the air as adults and as ferocious little nymphs in ponds but their great value simply is the way they enrich our world A backyard pond will draw them — they need freshwater for their life cycle—but often you can regard them in great hunting packs over dry land "It's common to see them in fields or along old roads," Flint says I can sit in my little community garden plot and see a dozen or so big dragonflies moving back and forth over the open gardens Van Dokkum has been photographing dragonflies for years is astronomy; he chairs the astronomy department at Yale University He observes nature at both poles of its scale at the microcosm of the insect world and the vast expanses of the cosmos Both are mysterious worlds that reveal their secrets slowly but van Dokkum has been inspired by one to study the other Fascinated by the dragonfly's compound optics he has collaborated with other astronomers to create a telescope consisting of a cluster of 10 telephoto camera lenses it has proved highly effective at finding new low-light galaxies specifically seven dwarf galaxies in the field of a large spiral galaxy known as M101 The images of each of the 400mm lenses are assembled into a single picture of galaxies that were too diffuse to find with conventional telescopes This artificial dragonfly eye differs from the real McCoy in a couple of regards Each of the camera lenses is focused on a common point whereas each of the dragonfly's is directed at a slightly different angle "with all the segments together creating a nearly 360-degree view," van Dokkum said Taking a leaf straight out of the dragonfly's book he is thinking of assembling a 50-lens array where clusters of 10 would look at five adjacent points in the heavens is that a dragonfly's eye has as many as 30,000 segments Try replicating that with telephoto lenses By my calculations you would spend $300 million on the optics alone Van Dokkum is struck that dragonflies have been on Earth for a period of time that is mind-boggling even by astronomic standards And yet the lifespan of each individual adult is a matter of weeks or months their bodies are faded and their wings ragged and with shredded wings they're still able to fly," he said and you can't help thinking that something so primitive can teach us so much Packaging Gateway spoke with Innocent's Jaap van Dokkum to learn about profitability and sustainability The general perception is that increasing sustainability puts pressure on the bottom line Jaap van Dokkum at soft drinks producer Innocent believes the longer-term rewards justify the short-term efforts Van Dokkum’s career to date has centred around corporate responsibility and sustainability which has been a part of The Coca-Cola Co since 2013 Since joining the smoothie maker and brand owner van Dokkum has been working on the construction of Innocent’s first fully sustainable production facility will be carbon-neutral and will come “wind turbines up-cycling waste heat and considerable reduction in water consumption” if you look only at the cost of packaging materials I feel that people always forget the upside behind sustainable operations we’ve found that suppliers and contractors are really interested in working with us because of our focus on sustainability – they feel they can learn from us The people that we hire are motivated because they want to help reduce waste in packaging.  It may be true that taking care of your workforce and taking care of the environment requires more investment but the returns on it are often more intangible and have a huge upside: a more dedicated workforce and a supply chain that is willing to go above and beyond what is normal in the world of packaging in order to help find solutions Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis there’s a lot of pressure from the public to be sustainable I think this is the driving force for a lot of them we use much less water and energy that it translates to a reduced energy bill it can be a big step to take – it’s normal to struggle with the transition It’s also normal to have to experiment with different solutions before the right one is found the benefits that come with switching to sustainable solutions will be apparent JvD: It’s a big issue and widely talked about many do not really understand the complexity behind making the change to a more sustainable solution Many consumers see statements as bold and unreachable goals but then don’t look at the steps required to reach that level of sustainability.  there’s a lot of pressure on corporations to come out with more sustainable solutions I could be sceptical and say “companies are only sustainable to get rid of criticisms” but I don’t think that’s always true.  Sustainability is achieved through taking steps; you see what works and then take the next step Change can’t be made in one day – it’s an iterative process As long as companies remain communicative with the public and transparent that’s how sustainability can be best achieved A little transparency goes a long way.  transparency is needed more in the corporate world Companies need to tell consumers: “We are working on a solution but we are not there yet.” They need to be aware of their mistakes and share those mistakes too because everyone in the industry can learn from these efforts I think that transparency is something that Innocent does well Innocent is very good at highlighting elements in the supply chain that are still a concern and addressing how they are being worked on Part of the transparency is admitting that we’re not perfect; It’ll take time to master we’re taking steps every day towards achieving the best.  JvD: Innocent has done a lot of work recently on the ingredients side, in getting all suppliers to be part of the ‘Sustainable Agriculture Initiative’ platform A large part of our carbon footprint comes from fruit farms – that’s why Innocent is building this carbon-neutral factory It’s a risk to do something never done before but there are a lot of benefits behind doing so The factory will show that we can actually run our bottling operations sustainably with a reduced water footprint Another reason is to create an environment that is nice for people to work in The factory also makes good business sense: It’ll generate more revenue which can then be invested in further sustainability efforts.  We’re also working on other innovations aiming for zero-emission transportation and partnering with our suppliers to reduce road miles The future for Innocent is to get this factory fine-tuned and to show the world that sustainable manufacturing is possible Give your business an edge with our leading industry insights View all newsletters from across the GlobalData Media network TWO of the Copplestone United FC teams, The Hawks U15s and The Kestrels U13s, have just returned from their trip to Dokkum, Holland to take part in the Bonifatiuscup! Natalie Chandler, Club Secretary, explained: “Both teams did incredibly well and should be very proud of what they achieved! “Massive thanks to coaches Victoria Fenemore and Phil Conibear for organising the trip and to Darren Chandler, Jo Carter, Tom Fenemore, Lloyd Fenemore, Richard Tripp and Colin Horwood for your time and support!” Comments Tel: 01363 774263[email protected]Follow us Further Links Owned or licensed to Tindle Newspapers Ltd | Independent Family-Owned Newspapers | Copyright & Trade Mark Notice & 2013 - 2025 Fiona van Dokkum home-schooled her son Ian and found it to be a tough but rewarding experience Celine NaughtonTue 3 Feb 2015 at 03:30Fiona van Dokkum has two answers to how it feels to have an autistic child where she smiles and says she adores him just as he is where she talks of having been "violated by nature - there's a hurt in there that won't go away" It doesn't diminish her complete and utter love for her son South Africa where Fiona and her husband Neil lived with their first child The new baby didn't take to breastfeeding and he was a great sleeper but hardly the kind of things that would set off alarm bells The diagnosis came two-and-a-half years later I knew something was up; I just didn't know what so there was a sense of relief in knowing at last what we were dealing with," says Fiona a future is gifted to you with that child - sharing conversations ideas and jokes; a future that includes school It probably took me about 10 years to come to terms with it." there was a much more pressing matter to deal with - finding the tools required to help her son to communicate She set up a team of speech therapists and other professionals to come to their home in Durban to work with Ian launched last month by the Mayor of Dungarvan who said: "I was struck by the forgiving way Fiona deals with those who didn't seem to quite comprehend that she knew and understood Ian's needs better than anyone else!" Her story is a first-hand account of the challenges pain and joy of helping a profoundly autistic child to achieve his full potential with little or no support from official agencies It's also a tribute to the unbreakable bond of a mother and child both triumphing against the odds to bring him out of his silent autistic world and enjoy life to the best of his ability Fiona and Neil decided to leave South Africa and raise their children elsewhere One reason they chose this country was because of the excellent services it purportedly offered for autistic children Ireland was Nirvana for the autistic child," says Fiona "Neil came back from his trip to Dublin with pamphlets showing that Irish state schools promised autism units with one teacher and two helpers to every six children and there appeared to be up to four of these schools in each area." Neil got a job as a lecturer and they packed their bags and settled in an idyllic part of County Waterford but it quickly became apparent that the pamphlets they had read were We were finding our way here and there were brick walls everywhere I looked these are good people trying to do the best job they can but autism is not a one-size-fits-all condition Every autistic child has different requirements." but Fiona says his behaviour regressed and she took him out of school and took it upon herself to teach him at home but with a strapping nearly-eight-year-old who was as stubborn as a mule and could turn on the 'I'm seriously autistic' mode at will We sat in silence as the minutes ticked by Ian staring into space and refusing to read the word 'the' me digging in my own heels and refusing to prompt him I begged him… and he read the whole sentence fluently and without stopping." with Ian sometimes happily co-operating and other times retreating to his own quiet place Fiona persevered and watched as Ian found his voice - and learned to use it When once Fiona and Neil thought Ian was drawing the same picture over and over again on his computer the footage of the movie Aristocats he'd seen on DVD after all the home-schooling and one-to-one attention from his mother-tutor he now attends a post-school facility where he is learning to interact with his peers and enjoys horse riding he has withdrawn somewhat into the comfort of his autistic world his skills and his finely tuned sense of humour are all intact thanks largely to the sheer dedication of his mother who refused to give up hope that her son would find his place in the world "We were lucky that we started Ian on an intensive programme at a critical time for language development It breaks my heart today to witness the anxiety of parents with autistic children over waiting lists for services but I say don't wait for the Government to deal with your child - take the reins yourself "There are lots of things you can do: sit down and read a story then give your child time to read it back to you A special needs child needs extra time to answer for him or herself but some days he will be bright and other days I have more patience than I ever believed I had or would need People tend not to wait longer than a few seconds for an answer to questions You have to wait and give him time so that he can get his thoughts in order I've learned when to make allowances and when not to I don't accept him pretending not to know it including autistic children; they're not a different species You can't put the condition before the child I am always open to the possibility that Ian might surprise me like giving me an answer I wasn't expecting People talk over each other and they talk over children with special needs Loving an Autistic Child' by Fiona van Dokkum published by Emu Ink at €10.00 (€12.99 incl postage and packing) for the paperback - also available as an eBook or to rent digitally - from the non-fiction section of the Emu Ink library at www.emuink.ie Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel