Sextans: the smallest cannibal galaxy discovered until now

11/10/2018
The researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) Luis Cicuéndez and Giuseppina Battaglia have found a case of galactic cannibalism on the smallest known scale until now. This is the Sextans galaxy, which has a mass some 100,000 times less than that of the Milky Way but has swallowed an even smaller companion. When they analyzed the dwarf galaxy they observed that the spatial distribution of the blue, metal-poor stars was round and regular, while that of the red, metal-rich stars was much more elliptical and irregular, with an overdensity of stars on the north-eastern side. >> Read more