Can you see a hazy patch of stars in the center of this week’s satellite image? This nearby dwarf galaxy was discovered recently.
The dwarf galaxy is named Donatiello II. It’s good to know that this dwarf galaxy looks so tricky that a special computer algorithm – developed to find galaxies – missed the dwarf galaxy. In the end, Donatiello II was found the old-fashioned way: by people who dug through the data themselves. You see, even computers can take a beating.
The image below was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Donatiello II can be seen right in the middle. Donatello II is not the most unusual dwarf galaxy in the universe. It is a group of many small stars with a larger number of stars. A faint glow can be seen around these stars.
The dwarf galaxy is named after Giuseppe Donatello, an accomplished amateur astronomer who analyzed data from the large-scale Dark Energy Survey (DES). In addition to Donatiello II, he also found two other faint dwarf galaxies, which he also named: Donatiello III and Donatiello IV. In addition to six nearby dwarf galaxies, Donatello has also discovered several planetary nebulae. In addition, the Italian is also a photographer, so if you are interested in his photos, Then take a look at Astrobin.com.
All three dwarf galaxies are satellite galaxies of NGC 253, also known as the Sculptor Galaxy. The VLT Survey Telescope captured a stunning image of this galaxy in 2011. NGC 253 is more than 11 million light-years from Earth. This is very close to cosmic standards. So close that even individual stars are visible.
Not done searching yet? More distant galaxies are visible in this Hubble image of Donatello II. Can you find them all?
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